Let’s Talk About…. Why We Do Genealogy
This is a continuation not of Alexandra Rain’s article but a parallel article. This bit is from the Sept/Oct 2020 issue of YourGenealogyToday magazine, an article by T.S. Davis titled “What I’m Looking For.” I quote from his article:
“It is an odd obsession, and people who are not consumed by it can’t understand why we don’t focus on our own lives at the least instead of scouring the internet and tramping around graveyards on the weekend, or why we don’t worry more about what’s going to happen to our family than what already has happened. There’s no good retort to this argument. But I will say this: the past is as unpredictable as the future, but unlike the future, the past is discoverable, and often a lesson can be learned that prepares us for the future. And also, a person’s unique personality and struggle in life, their contribution to the human experience, is not forgotten until the past person who knew and loved them is gone. Until that happens, something can still be learned from them. And even when they finally are forgotten, some future obsessed descendant like me may come along and discover them all over again and appreciate them for the interesting life of anonymity that they lived.”
“Most of us would like to be remembered ourselves, so we do our fair share of remembering. Finally, there is the desire of practically everyone not to feel alone in this present moment. We want to be part of a tradition, a family that struggled and failed, or succeeded, and struggled again, a family that somehow, inexplicably and miraculously, led to us in this present moment. Because it somehow validates what we’re going through and gives us the strength to continue.”