Following Our Ancestors’ Blueprint- Or Not
As a parent, one frequently looks to previous generations for guidance on how to do such important work as nourish and protect the soul of a child. It can get tricky though, if you are unsure if those past models are reliable or valid to begin with.
Many years ago, before I was even thinking about the spiritual tasks of parenting, I went to a conference where the main speaker led an icebreaker in which conference participants were asked to introduce themselves by telling the group who their role model was.
Some participants said familiar famous names like Maya Angelou and Mahatma Gandhi, but most named people in their family. Mothers. Grandmothers. Great-grandmothers. And Aunties- literally generations of (mostly female) role models.
I was one of the participants who named a famous-somebody, but I remember being bothered by that. I secretly wished I was able to call one of my ancestors a role model.
Fast forward to about 6 months ago when I learned about a Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience named Rachel Yehuda who’s research focuses on new evidence that the stress and trauma experienced by one generation can be transmitted through DNA to the next, and something called epigenetics says that it might be possible for genes to actually be turned on and off.
Now I am someone who is frequently found awe-struck with what learning and understanding is rapidly unfolding in regards to our biology and particularly our neurobiology (even if I only understand about .01% of it), but this information touched me in a more meaningful way.
I began to consider how Dr. Yehuda’s scientific research findings and spiritual traditions like Buddhism may hold the same wisdom.
A common belief in many Buddhist traditions is rebirth or reincarnation which occurs in a cycle called samsara. This cycle is said to end only when an individual attains enlightenment, and it is karma, intentional actions that lead to future consequences, which perpetuates the cycle.
Might these two ideas over-lap? Are these divisions between soul, mind and brain/biology as distinctive as we’d previously imagined them to be?
If not, where does that leave me? What about my DNA? What about my personal karma and ancestral karma? Am I, and in turn my children, essentially biogically and karmically screwed?
Or, could I use my ancestors as role models in the sense that I will learn from their mistakes. I will intentionally (which is a necessary component for karma) stand on the shoulders of my ancestors in the sense that I will gain wisdom through their unhappy experiences. From this, I could make new and different choices that would nourish and protect the souls of my children; thereby potentially affecting future DNA and the cycle of rebirth, samsara.
What do you think? Are you still with me?
Now, let’s rewind. I’m back at the conference many years ago. The main speaker asks each participant to introduce herself by sharing one of her role models…I answer, “my paternal grandmother.”
Much wisdom, and therefore meaning, could be gained through empathic examination and understanding of her life that could be helpful for me in my own spiritual and parenting journey- would that not be the definition of a role model?
So who was she?
My paternal grandmother, who’s name I also took as a pseudonym for this blog, got pregnant and married (in that order) during World War II. Her husband was at war in Europe for the first year and change of their marriage, and was not there when their first (of 6!) child was born.
When my grandfather returned from the war, my grandmother quickly got pregnant with her second child, and soon after the decision was made to move several hundred miles away from her family, whom she had continued to live with while my grandfather was at war, to a house in New England nearby my grandfather’s family.
Unfortunately, the “house” my grandfather moved his young family to was not much.
It was an old farm house with no plumbing and no electricity, and my grandmother initially decided to high-tail it right back to her parents’ house with her 4 year-old son (my father) and 2 year-old daughter until my grandfather could get his "house" in order.
It wasn’t long before my grandfather came to get her though, and she went with him back to the farmhouse.
My grandmother went on to have 4 more children, and my grandfather never really got his “house” in order. Though by all accounts a likable guy, due to frequently changing jobs, inability to keep money in the bank, and being known for his infidelities, it’s safe to say my grandfather was not known for his dependability or resilience, and his literal house and figurative house (his ego) was full of cracks and unfinished parts that were so poorly constructed they were weak at best, but arguably dangerous- an ego structure made of cards.
But my grandmother didn’t know that in the beginning- couldn’t have known that. As the story went for an uneducated, unemployed, pregnant woman in the 1940’s, when you got pregnant, you got married, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Regrettably, I was never able to meet this grandmother. She died of cancer in her 50's a year before I was born.
Some days I wish I could tap my magic wand and give my grandmother a re-do similar to the character of George Monroe in the 2001 movie Life as a House.
Like my grandfather, George Monroe, played by Kevin Kline in the movie, inherited a dilapidated house from his father, both figuratively and literally, that the movie character continued to live in.
In the film, the house is a perfect metaphor for the construction of ego with emphasis on the important role of intentional parenting as one of its major themes throughout the film.
However in the movie, unlike in my grandfather’s own life, when the movie character’s life implodes after being fired from his job and learning he has cancer, he does decide to tear down the original “house” to the bare bones and rebuild from ground up in order to create and pass-on a worthy “house” to his only child. The movie character understood that it is never too late to start rebuilding.
But maybe for some, rebuilding does not happen until a future generation comes along. A generation that looks at some of the ancestral blueprints and decides there are necessary structural changes to be made.
I think this is where gratitude comes in.
Austrian born, Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast, who has a great Ted-Talk called “Want to be Happy? Be Grateful,” says that to experience gratitude we do not have to be grateful for hardship or painful events. But, and this is a big but, we can experience gratitude in every moment due to the opportunity for growth, learning and wisdom that is available to us in every moment.
In this way, my grandmother is one of my role models, and I have gratitude for her and her life. She is one of many ancestors whose life experience will guide me as I make decisions that will build and shape the home that will house the souls of my own children. And for that I am grateful.
This blog entry is the 5th in a 6 Part Series.
To be concluded…
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