The new neighbor down the street asked about my ancestry. I told him I was Swedish and Norwegian and maybe something else.  The maybe was a rumor that a great – great grandmother on my mother’s side entertained the sailors for money and who knows where the father was from.  It may or may not be true, but I like spreading the story. I am certain my neighbor’s curiosity about my ancestry was not sinister in any way.  However, it gave me pause.

Recently I saw a posted meme listing things about “us” vs. “them.”  One item stated “us” – Americans, not Muslins.  The logic was stupid, I have no doubt, the intent was sinister.

Nobody picks their ancestors, yet we did not get here without them.  Ancestral paths are long and often twisting.  The ancient world was brutal.  I suspect along the line we all have ancestors who ranged from almost saints to truly evil.

Fortunately, who our ancestors were, does not predetermine the settings of our moral compass.  No matter who our ancestors are, trying to be a good decent person is probably the best path for any of us to actually be a good and decent person.

The bottom line is our ancestors got us here, how we move forward is no longer their fault.  Sure, circumstances such as inherited propensity for addiction can cause us to stray from the straight and narrow but blaming our ancestors for what we did with what we got seems a stretch.

None of us is perfect. What would perfect even look like?  But here is the deal.  A good and decent person does not assume someone else is not a good and decent person based on that person’s heritage.  That is just wrong.  We judge others by their individual actions not the actions of their ancestors.

If you go back far enough, all of our ancestors come from South Africa. As we migrated from one region to another, over many thousands of years, slight differences in DNA developed between groups in different regions.  Persons from different regions often had different skin tones, certain body types, propensity for certain diseases and the like.  Today, it is possible to test a person’s DNA and estimate what regions their ancestors inhabited.

To be clear there is only one species of human, Homo sapiens.  All of us share about 99.9% the same DNA.  When they test for differences between us they look at the 0.1% of our DNA.  Persons from every region can and do successfully mate with one another.  We have about the same amount of variation in our DNA between persons within our primary ancestral region as we do between persons from different ancestral regions.

In the past 500 years or so, new transportation methods allowed persons to more rapidly move between the regions.  For example, in the 1700s, ships brought people from Europe and Africa to South and North America.  The people native to both North and South America were nearly wiped out by disease that the Europeans had developed an immunity to.  Today, ships, planes, trains, autos, motorcycles, and who knows what else are mixing the populations between regions.

The population of almost any region on earth now has mixed ancestry.  The results of the Ancestry.com DNA test never came back 100% South African. All of us have ancestors who migrated over time.

I was born in the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis. That hospital is now HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center). I have lived in the Twin Cities my entire life.  Over 3.28 million people live within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  The ancestries represented within this region include people from every continent (except maybe Antarctica) and most countries within those continents.

Virtually every one of the 3.28 million people who live here are not native to the area.  The thing is because we live there now, the Twin Cities metropolitan area is now part of our ancestral line.  All descendants of the 3.28 million people living in the Twin Cities area will have ancestors who were from the Twin Cities area, even if it was just a short while.

Me saying I am Swedish and Norwegian actually means three generations ago I had some relatives who lived in Sweden or Norway.  Thus, I can say I am from Sweden and Norway.

Sure, you can pretend some who live here are “them.”  However, once we live in the same area we are from that area. Everyone who lives here is an “us.”

If you live in the Twin Cities area, you are from the Twin Cities area.  The Twin Cites is part of your heritage.  Since the Twin Cities has people from all corners of the earth, like it or not, so does your heritage.  The Twin Cities region has people of many religions and many who are not religious.  It has educated people and those not so educated.  It has the cultured and the not so cultured.  It has the rich and poor.  It has all sexual orientations.  It is a diverse area by virtually all measurements of diverse.

Yes, we and our ancestors come from many different backgrounds. Our children and our children’s children don’t even see most of the silly things we think made us different one from another.  The result is an area with an amazing diversity and richness of culture.  It is not always easy for those of one culture to understand those of another. Sometimes it can seem threatening for some.  Yet,  together we are what America is and always has been.

So, let me end with this thought.  We should each do our best to be a good and decent person.  Look around a bit and realize you are part of a wonderful community where we judge people by what they do as individuals, not by some weird idea that we should be judged by our heritage.  The golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  However, remember, most often the “others” are not them, we are all us.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

I was a management analyst.  That is no longer my job.  I retired.  Being a management analyst is still part of my identity, but it is no longer a good description of who I am. My retirement goals are not about becoming a better management analyst or about even being a management analyst.

Once I retired, it only took a couple days to realize management analyst no longer describes who I am.  I turned in my ID key card.  They waited for my retirement to remodel my former workspace. My space has been replaced by a new configuration of meeting rooms and a break room.  I may still have the skill set needed to do management analysis work. What I no longer have is that job. I do not regret having been a management analyst, however, I am moving on.

My old job was largely satisfying.  I liked most of the people I worked with.  However, it was how I made my living, it was not my life.  Management analyst matched my skill set and I enjoyed the work.  It was a decent way to earn a living and being a management analyst became a large part of my identity.

The weird thing is, now that I am not a management analyst I do not feel there is a vacant hole in my identity.  I was me then and I am still me now.  The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening.  My life changed upon retirement, but I still spend 24 hours a day being me.  My identity is not about my old job.  My life is about how I spend my time now.  My identity is about my life now and not what it was a couple months ago.

It is a cliché but life is a journey, not a destination.  Turns out my identity is also about the journey and not some sort of destination.  I am a work in progress.  My identity is a person who is trying to move forward on the journey I call my life

So, now that I am no longer a management analyst, who am I?  The reality is that while much has changed, mostly the fundamental stuff is the same.  My sleep schedule is a bit different, however, I probably get about the same amount of sleep as I used to.

I still eat food. All of my bodily functions are pretty much the same.  Socially, I still interact with people both in person and online.  I still have friends.  I still do things with them.  I am a student at the U of MN, so I am still trying to learn new things, some of which are challenging.  My daily routine has changed but the results are pretty much the same.  The house gets maintained, laundry gets done, meals get prepared and eaten.

Most days, I still create a mental to-do list and get some satisfaction from completing the tasks on the list.  I still try to have some long-term, mid-term and short-term items on my mental list.

The short-term items give me a daily feeling of having accomplished something.  The long-term items are more like goals that I spend at least a little time working on. Taking classes to try to be a better writer is a long-term goal.  Long-term to-do items give me a sense of heading in a positive direction.  The mid-term items give me a sense of working on something of a bigger scale than making the bed.  Cleaning out a lifetime of old stuff as we transition to a lifestyle with less baggage or weight is an example of a mid-term goal.

I no longer have a job so, yes, my identity is a bit different.  The fact that I no longer have a job does not make me a different person.  I still have short-term, mid-term and long-term goals.  I still work every day to make those goals a reality.  I still have hope that I can make a positive difference in the world.  I still try to make that hope a reality.  The venue where I try to implement my hope has changed.  I no longer work at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.  I am still an environmentalist but the environment is no longer where I focus as much of my energy.

All of that said I am still who I was, which is a person working on becoming a better me.  My identity is still evolving like it always has been.  As long as I can remember my goal and my identity have always been to just keep moving forward and to help others around me to do the same.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com