If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. You have to understand your origins to clarify your past. It is quite reminiscent of the musings and writings of John Paul Sartre. He asserted that objects, inanimate things, they are given a destiny, an essence, a specific purpose before they even exist. A recipe of a great apple pie or the blueprint of the Empire State Building all preceded and pre-defined the object. But for people, for humans, for earthlings, it’s the exact opposite. A baby is born into existence with an undefined destiny and essence. But for the over-the-top expectations of the parents and other peers—existence precedes the essence. Yes, there is the potential of their DNA but how or if that gets utilized is often a crap shoot. That’s just potential and ambition. A dream. This is what makes being a human amazing. It’s why living, exploring, seeking, and understanding who you are, how you got here and what defines you is critical.

Your essence unveiled.

Relatives hold the secrets.

We have to be the authors, the engineers, the researchers, and the inventors of our own way forward. Informed by our history and the legacy from the infinite number of investments that have been made for us to be here at this particular point in time. All for us to understand why we are different, think different, and have innate inclinations. Not to limit us but to inform us.

Relatives have their own set of idiosyncrasies and challenges. Families are notoriously dysfunctional. But they are your family, including crazy uncle Steve. But that’s how we’re connected to the world that came before us. Family means you can see yourself in other people whether you like it or not. Because you share DNA. And that connection is a reality check against your separateness, your individuality and your ego. You remember that you’re part of a lineage. And through the process of Darwinian choices, luck, craziness and serendipity, you’re here on this planet with a body and mind filled with chromosomal leftovers and survivors that make you—you.

You have to face the truth.  What you see at family reunions and gatherings of any sort small, medium or large are really a time to reconnect with who you are and where you come from.

Your tree has many mysterious roots and  branches.

So hard to understand who you are if you don’t understand your relatives. Not to copy or continue what was done in the past. To understand the array of elements, ingredients, experiences that compose the kaleidoscope of the way you view the world. Your essence, your soul is a neural, atomic tapestry that wraps around everything you think, say, and do.

What awakens the sleeping, dormant, and latent parts of our family legacy, our history, our genealogy?

Relatives? What about a reunion?

Reunion means to make one again, to reconnect, to unite people, memories, and emotions together again.

There’s something special about connecting blood relatives to one another. Reunions or any multi-generational gathering at their best, reconnect us to ancestry and ancestors—if we inquire and share.

The stories of our living elders and the stories about our ancestors.

I just got back from an amazing family reunion of four generations of relatives. And we spent time comparing, debating, and telling stories. Much of this could have happened when others were still living but we didn’t engage them enough. Something we regretted. Something the next generation we hope will remedy.

Instead of just socializing, we injected conversations and times to share, compare and learn. For one generation to teach another.

We focused on reconnecting the grid of relationships to empower commonality, history and understanding.  Re-energizing the sparks of our family flame.

We unveiled our lineage back 34 generations to 1106! And we put names and faces and stories together. The youngest attendees ran around with the newly updated family tree to identify everyone and their relationship to one another. I was beaming.

We all need to feel belonging and to be part of something much bigger than oneself.

This reunion broke the trance of individualism, separation, and transactional solitude for me.

We are not alone. Never have been. Our souls were forged in the great crucible of survival, selection, and serendipity.

That shaped my essence.

Your essence is not the sum of your attributes, it is the unique synergy of these parts and bits that are the surviving traits and chromosomal components that manifest as you. I know none of us feels special when measured against the harsh and unyielding standards of the world of expectations. But the truth is you are a mesmerizing symphony of inheritances.

We ignore them, dismiss them or never see them at our peril.

“Look at the picture of my great uncle (we never met) he looks like my son!”, exclaimed my first cousin as she looked at a 100 year old sepia toned photo for the first time.

Yeah he does. And the unanswerable questions commence. Like all of life the answers are not what we seek. It is all a process of opening the door for our essence to emerge and express itself. Not fighting our  instincts, intuitions, and ideation. But welcoming the animation of our ancestral archives. It is the appreciation that there is this rich library of genetic energy within each of us. Yes, the archives are a blend of the good, bad and the ugly. And we can be more finely attuned to these characteristics. But I am suggesting that a welcome mat be provided for the good.

I am also not suggesting you initiate a family reunion but that every encounter with a relative is a time to hear a new story or confirm something you know. To not regret it later.

These insights are not a map or set of operating instructions. But a set of clues about your destiny and your path forward. To be interpreted by us. To help us figure out why we are here. From existence to essence.

We look back and we cannot see them or hear their voices. Yet we know they are there, and we do not know them. By learning their history, we honor our history. We cherish our memories and the memories we have fashioned. We tell their stories and make them our own. Part of our legacy is to remind the next generation that we are the wildest dreams of our ancestors. Part of a journey of thousands of relatives whose love, struggle, and sacrifice gives us choices and chances they never imagined. And these relatives made it possible for us to embrace our essence for wilder and more beautiful dreams.