Ancestral Judgement

Like most Americans, I'm kind of a Heinz 57 of nationalities. I'm for sure Irish and German and English, with probably a little bit of French thrown in somewhere back in the woodpile (yeah, I know...). Parts of my family came over to America centuries back, while other parts came in the most recent European mass migration about 100 years ago. These were men and women who gave up everything - literally - to make a new life. Some succeeded and some, no doubt, could have made a better go of it. But thinking about all these people, this huge unbroken line of hopes and dreams and aspirations and disappointments and tragedies that led to me being right here, right now prompted one question.

   What would my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather have thought about me?

   This is the guy about 160 years back, with my surname, who first decided he wanted to leave the coal mines or tin mines or chimney sweep academy or whatever terrible situation he endured in England and get on a leaky ship to cross the Atlantic packed in steerage with a bunch of his dentally-challenged countrymen. Whether he leapt at the opportunity the first he heard of it or whether he thought about it for a long time before boarding the boat, the fact remains that he did it. He took the gamble, he rolled the dice. He committed.
   He was almost certainly less educated than I am - they didn't know about galaxies or germs or Keynsian economics 160 years ago - but he was arguably far more courageous. So he wins that one. Which would you rather have in your family tree, a bookworm or someone who actually did something?
   Chances are good my modest apartment would seem like a palace to him, with its refrigerator, central air, and large flat-screen TV. And my truck would be a marvel. The internet and e-mail might seem like miracles, or wishes granted by a genie in a lamp. So I'm ahead of him there.
   But what would he think of the way I make my living? Would he think his time in the tin mines had been a vacation in comparison? And with all the opportunities in my world that he didn't have in his, would he wonder why I didn't take the same chances he did? Would he be proud of me or would he be utterly disappointed that I had squandered the gift he'd risked everything to give his descendants? Would he even like me or would he want to kick my ass? Because as tough as I am, that guy could still probably mop the floor with me.
   I think I have an obligation I'm not fulfilling to that guy. I have a responsibility to live up to my potential to prove to him that getting on the ship was the right thing to do.