Episode 80. Don't Forget Your Forbearers

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Don’t Forget Your Forbearers.”

You are not just you, but rather you are the culmination of hundreds of lives that came before you. Your past is more than just a short life that you've lived because of your past. It's also made up of all the pasts of the people that made you who you are, as well as all the past of the people that made them who they were.

This may be a no-brainer to some of you, but your family's history is as relevant to your history as your own lived experience. What shaped those people? Not only how you behave, but how you look. All of that came largely from those that came before you. Every person on earth was born from the union of a man and a woman, and your story goes back a long way.

We're all influenced by our times, but our times. Arrived collectively from our ancestors. Some of us may be ashamed of our ancestors, while others may be proud, but either way, we have a story that started long before we were born. My family knows their history pretty far back, and I'm deeply grateful for this, the good and the bad.

I have hundreds of years of history to draw on, starting with my mother and father who grew up on opposite sides of the United States. Moving on to my ancestors on both different sides. Those that came before me included a businessman, a beauty queen, a milkman alignment, a cook, a farmer, an attorney, a homemaker, rich people, poor people, smart people, dumb people, a pirate, a soldier, a pilgrim, a pioneer, a nobleman, and a peasant.

Cowards and heroes. We inherit a lot more than genes from our families. Their stories serve as both warnings and inspiration for us in our lives. Whoever you are and whatever your family did or didn't do, be proud of the fact that you have a story to draw on. Both the good and the bad are lessons to you.

If everyone in your family that you knew as an alcoholic, you have been given an opportunity to be the phoenix that rose from the ashes. If your family has only ever known success in life, then you have a rich vault of experience to draw upon to springboard you to the next level. Don't ignore your family, the good or the bad.

Learn their stories and make them a part of you. Keep the bad as lessons learned and draw on the good to inspire you. The beautiful thing about family is that if you keep on going back in your history, you'll find people that lived lives that you are proud of. And those that live lives, that would make you ashamed.

Nobody is immune from having bad examples in their lives. The most honored lineage in our time would probably be that of the British royal family. It also happens to be one of the most recorded, and even though it's not my lineage, I'm grateful for it. They are living proof that every family has absolutely terrible people in it.

There's nothing special about that family other than the fact that they have inherited power for generations. But just like other families, they have some incredible standouts that they can draw upon for inspiration. We live in a time that really seems to have its eyes set in one direction. We look toward the future and often ignore the past. 

Things used to move more slowly, but in our day and age, the last three or four generations have watched as the world they grew up in changed so much that by the time they had their own children, it wasn't even the same with change that happened so quickly. It can be hard to think on the past because it feels less relevant.

What your grandpa experienced growing up in the fifties probably doesn't. Seem like it might relate to how you're living today. They are relevant, though people are still people, and the problems we deal with are the same problems. We have always dealt with sadness, boredom, love, hate, hunger, discomfort, and everything else.

If it were true that the lives of the past were not relevant to our own. Then I think it's fair to say we shouldn't be watching movies unless they're about people just like us living in the same part of the world, in the same stage of life and doing the same things as us. But obviously that's silly because of course everyone's story can be relevant to us.

We entertain a kind of hubris when we think ourselves to be so unique and to have problems that are so unrelatable to other people. People are not so different and independent as that. We are never going to be the first or the last to go through a thing. In fact, I believe we're all so similar to each other that it is almost as if humanity collectively is the only true individual and we are nothing more than just a part of it.

That being said, the line of people that brought you into the world deserve our appreciation. Even if not always our respect, all stories may be relevant to us in some way, but the stories of the people that made us are that much closer to us and that much more relevant. On the flip side, I think we all too often take our family history too seriously when we treat it like it's meant to define our destiny.

Our generational trauma lets us make excuses when it could be a lesson learned. Family history is only a family's future. If we let it, the past is such a lesson, but even more so is our own past, and part of that is the people that are responsible for our existence. One of the Christian commandments says to honor your mother and father.

And I've heard a few takes on how exactly to interpret that, but in the context of what we're talking about, I think you could take that to mean that we should appreciate the lessons, we can learn from them, whether the lessons serve as a warning or as an example. Looking in our family's history offers a clearer picture to us than looking at the people around us.

When we look for lessons from our contemporaries, we are influenced by aspirations, envy, and other very human wants and desires. When we look at the past, it can be easier to see it for what it really was, especially after the story's already played out. Maybe you look at your friends today that are partying hard and seem to be living their best lives, but when you look back at your Uncle John.

Who did the same thing, you might find that his life was empty, or maybe you'll see that it took big changes for him to get to a better place. Maybe your great aunt was filthy rich, but no one liked her because she was genuinely a terrible person. There's clarity in the past that can be untainted by our current biases.

Not to say we don't sometimes cherry pick stories that justify our current wants and desires sometimes. When I look back at my own family, I see that some of them who had less worldly status were sometimes happier than the ones that had more. I see how tragic it is to have a family broken apart and children deprived of their fathers.

I see what a happy life actually looks like. Don't deprive yourself of the lessons you can learn from the past. Your family's history is a part of you and ignoring it is to live without a part of yourself. This is Skipping Stones - “Don’t Forget Your Forbearers.”  You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit www.skippingstonessr.com.

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