Sibling Rivalry

None of us know exactly from whence we originated but have a pretty good idea that if we were to trace it back far enough, we would eventually arrive at the first male and female to have had successful conception.  The mother and father of mankind; our great, great (1000 times back  or more) grandparents.

And from that union and the subsequent unions of their children, the global community has been populated into what it is today.

And, depending upon one’s perspective(s) or point(s)-of-view, we are all simply brother and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles to everybody else in the world regardless of where we live, what we believe, what language we speak, or what color our skin might be.

And, while some people might perceive this as a positive realization, others (no doubt) will perceive it as a negative realization, and there will always be a few others who simply refuse to believe it at all.

Yet, this is precisely why (in my opinion) mankind is so vastly wealthy with it abundance of cultural diversities.  It is also from these cultural diversities that we (mankind) has crafted various systems of beliefs (philosophies) or religious (spiritual) practices.  However, all faiths (again in my opinion) can ultimately be linked together through similar variations of the “creation” story, further reinforcing the premise that mankind came from only one set of great, great (1000 times back or more) grandparents.

Call me naively stupid but if this is the case and I believe it actually is the case, then why are we killing each other off (and have been for centuries) as if we are enemies?

If this is the case, why do we treat each other with such disrespect and disdain?

This distortion lies within our own mind(s) and is obviously (again, my opinion) a result (or inescapable byproduct) of our mutated DNA chains, due to in-breeding within families and relatives when the very first brother and sister mated and conceived children, providing us (modern day mankind) with this unavoidable outcome.

One would think (and I certainly do) that most of us are smart enough to see this phenomenon; therefore, one can only conclude (as I certainly do) that most of us have simply decided to do nothing about it.  And, even if we wanted to do something about this, what would it be?  This is really nothing (again in my opinion) that we can do.

So, it appears that we will always have this sibling rivalry until someone (or many actually) decides it needs to stop!

Finding Self

Who am I?

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship.

Born: September 16, 1950 (age 62), Piedmont

Movies and TV shows: Finding Your Roots, African American Lives, Faces of America, Looking for Lincoln, America Beyond the Color Line, A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.More

Education: University of Cambridge, Yale University, Yale Law School, Clare College, Cambridge, Potomac State College of West Virginia University

Awards: MacArthur Fellowship, American Book Award, Jefferson Lecture, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

Skip's New Series:  "The African Americans:  Many Rivers to Cross."  It airs in the Fall of 2013 and will be a 6 hour series.

For more than 30 years, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been an influential public intellectual with a distinct style, that I personally witnessed this past weekend, helping all of us who were in the audience understand complex genealogical concepts.

Henry Gates, known by me as "Skip" is best known for his research tracing the family and genetic history of famous African-Americans. "There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees," I heard him say. "My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree."

Charlemagne

Skip has traced the roots of prominent Americans like Oprah Winfrey and celebrity Yo-Yo Ma  and now the Hutchins/Pegram family tracing our roots back to Charlemagne. 

Charlemagne (pron.: /ʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; French pronunciation: ​[ʃaʁləmaɲ]; c. 742 – January 28, 814 at Aachen), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus or Karolus Magnus) or Charles I, was the founder of the Carolingian Empire, reigning from 768 until his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdom, adding Italy, subduing the Saxons and Bavarians, and pushed his frontier into Spain. The oldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, Charlemagne was the first Emperor in Western Europe since the fall of the West Roman Empire three centuries earlier.

Skip told us his goal in this work is twofold: "First, to show that we're all immigrants, and secondly, that we're all mixed — that we all have been intermarrying, or interrelated sexually from the dawn of human history."

But, is a genealogical connection who we really are? 

Or, all that we can be? 

Will be become great because our ancestors were? 

Will that give us the hope that we need to aspire to great achievements like they did?

Skip told the Hutchins family that “…we were as white as white can be…  that we had no mixtures of other races and cultures in our DNA…” And, while I found that interesting, I also found that sad because I like the idea of being “mixed-up” with the rest of the world.

But still as I continued to wonder, this did not tell me who I am only from whence I came.

So, who am I?

I am a:

1.      Male

2.      Husband

3.      Father

4.      Brother

5.      Cousin

6.      Uncle

7.      Nephew

8.      Divorced

9.      Remarried

10.  Over 60

11.  Well educated

12.  Veteran

13.  60’s survivor

14.  Southerner

15.  Over 6 feet tall

16.  Over-weight

17.  Have heart disease

18.  Cancer survivor

19.  Liberal thinker

20.  Cat owner

21.  World traveler

22.  Writer/blogger

While this list is still very much incomplete is this who I am?

At times, I find myself very compassionate and submissive and at other times I find myself hateful, angry, and vindictive. 

According to the Meyers-Briggs Personality Profile, I am an INTJ.  INTJ’s are typically found in 1% of the general population and can be best described as “builders of theoretical models and concepts.”

www.reflectionsinthoughts.blogspot.com

According to the astrological signs, I am a Scorpio, since my birthday falls on Halloween.

According to my personal beliefs, I am very spiritual and religious showing my appreciation in the way I live my life regardless of what my DNA shows.

But, is all of this enough to fill the emptiness inside that we all eventually feel and attempt to fill as we grow older and attempt to discover who I really am.