What Makes You Who You Are Today?

This is not a thought that comes from the ruminations of my own mind, but it’s right up my alley! A connection of mine (Daniel J Koren) started this train humming down the tracks. What makes you who you are today?

Have you heard the old adage? “If you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, then you must know he had help getting there.” Essentially, we are not where we are only by our own power, rather, we come here from a long line of DNA, Heritage, Legacy, or connections. This made us who we are. At a personal level, you add skills, milestones, coaches, mentors, and guides to help shape you into the person you want to be. To get to that fence post requires help. You are not in this alone.

Look at this logical approach. It’s simply the numbers.

Follow the math!

400 years of your history requires 4,094 ancestors! Titles, rolls, successes, failures, life expectancies! There may be some crossovers so the numbers modify depending on circumstances. Think it through and follow the math, and you will see that certain facts bleed through the numbers.

1. You know only a couple of the people in your ancestry. Their story is revealed by their relation to you. Parents, grandparents, and maybe a great grandparent or two have a story to tell but at your young age, you probably do not care to listen. Nor Learn!
2. These 4,094 ancestors lived through times we only know from the history books. World wars. Pandemics. Poverty. Inequalities. Persecution.
3. They persevered. One way or another, they made it through. You are their biological witness.
4. They did not have a social platform to moan their way through life.

This is only a shortened list of thoughts, but think about it… There’s story here!

Knowing where I come from, helps me understand who I am today, and definitely shows me what my future can look like. Only, I have the power of changing the outcome.

Ancestry Documentation

There is a book full of ancestry documentation and it’s easy and inexpensive to obtain. But you will not find your name there. It’s an old book. The Bible. Pages. Chapters. Books! It tells the story of God, his creation, and life along the way of thousands of years of history.

The New Testament starts by documenting the lineage of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Beginning with Abraham! (Matthew 1:1-17) The only other Gospel account giving similar lineage moves backward from Jesus to Adam. (Luke 3:23-38) Of course, there are names we cannot pronounce, and history we don’t understand, nor can we know the story of every single person. We do note that not every generation was documented as some were not important to the storyline from the writer’s viewpoint.

The last gospel was from John, and he states with his last breath this thought:

And there are also many other things that Jesus did,
which if they were written one by one,
I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books
that would be written. Amen.
(John 21:25 NKJV)

Think about it. The World itself cannot contain the books that would be written about a single person. What would you do with 400 years of history from your own ancestry?

Does It Really Matter?

I suspect that if you are trying to tie a personage into your heritage for want of recognition or even for legal reasons, then it may matter. On the other hand, if you want to stay legal for marrying purposes, then it really matters! (I’m my own grandpa!)

The bottom line? There are times that it really matters. There are times it matters not at all.

You could specialize. Close relations that had an influence on you, voila! That’s why you are what you are. Or, you can identify with those in the past that had particular traits similar to you, so you would want to document them. There’s the connection!

The writer of Hebrews extracts out the names, roles, and lives of people who give an example of Faith. (Hebrews 11) These examples could tell you what Faith Living is all about!

Paul simply reminds Timothy of his heritage through his mother and grandmother. (2 Timothy 1:5) He does this at the ending of his ministry and in his last known epistle. At times, I think of this as his Last Will and Testament.

One Last Thought

We bought a couple of German Shepherd puppies this year. Two locales so they are probably not related at all. Yet, the American Kennel Association has standards and rules to keep the bloodline pure. Since all dogs probably have their heritage from wolves, every breed is bred for certain traits and characteristics. Of course, breeding for this purpose creates a specific kind of animal.

Since our dogs are registered with the AKA, we know something about their lineage. Our paperwork only shows three generations, but we have some beautiful predecessors, and some were award-winning dogs! This is only important if we want to produce some expensive offsprings that will reap huge financial gain!

We just want a family pet. Nor do we want them to be trained for specific purposes, but they both have some inherent qualities they are known for. They are great guard dogs, and extremely fond of us. They love to protect us! It takes a strong body to handle them, and you don’t want to get in the middle of their teeth when playing.

Our 10-year old English Shepherd tolerates their puppy play, and even though smaller, she knows how to put them in their place when she’s had enough. They respect her age, position on the farm, and the fact that she was here first!