Finding Your Roots

April 10, 2022

If your parents had never met, would you have never been born?

To what extent is your identity predetermined by your family genes and family history?

These are two of the questions that occur to me whenever I (infrequently) watch the PBS documentary series, “Finding Your Roots,” hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates. In each episode of that series, two or three celebrities are given a genealogically researched Book of Life that features photos, birth records, and other items from their family history, including genetic (DNA testing) research. It can be entertaining to watch their facial expressions and body language as they discover unknown stories and dramas from their ancestors.

I experienced a similar pleasure recently when D’Arcy, a fourth cousin once removed on my dad’s side of the family, wrote to me from Canada and provided some fascinating details about the lives of my German-speaking great grandparents, who I knew when I was a child.

But while I enjoyed learning some new particulars about my great grandparents, and gaining a better understanding of them, my grandmother, and my dad, I also feel that on another level that information, while interesting, has little or nothing to do with who I am.

Yet it is true that we are shaped to varying degrees by our parents and extended family members, as well as by our culture, nationality, ethnicity, and other variables such as our gender, class, and any religious background that we might have had.

The question of identity is always in the news, in one form or another. Political, racial, and religious tribalism frequently makes headlines. Case in point: Although Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine in an attempt to reestablish the Russian/Soviet empire and bring glory to himself and to Mother Russia, a big part of his motivation is to impose Russian identity, language, and culture upon other eastern European nations. This aggressive assertion of Russian patriotism disregards the wishes of Ukrainian and other peoples who have their own cultures and national pride and who have no desire to be dominated by someone else’s idea of who they should give their allegiance to. But Putin is willing to kill as many Ukrainians as he wants to in order to command the respect he believes that he and Russia are entitled to on the world stage.

Another case in point: Today’s first round of the presidential election in France, where the center-right incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, is being challenged by the far right candidate Marine Le Pen. Although Le Pen and her National Rally party are campaigning on pocketbook issues, she and her party have long appealed to French fears of the loss of their national identity through immigration, multiculturalism, and Islamic extremism. They feel threatened by “le wokism” (American identity politics), which they believe is an attack upon their Catholic heritage and traditional values. Like many Trump supporters, they have working class grievances against educated elites because they see those elites as causing the white majority to be replaced by non-white immigrants. According to an article in the New York Times, some French are anxious that they are no longer “at home” in their own country.

While I find some of these conservative concerns understandable, Le Pen has close ties to Vladimir Putin, and her party has antisemitic roots going back to World War II when some of her party’s early supporters collaborated with the Nazis. Her authoritarian, ultra nationalist, anti-NATO, pro-Putin policies are a threat to Europe in general and France in particular. But after today’s presidential primary, she has a real shot at winning the runoff election on April 24.

While I recognize the human tendency to align ourselves with our familial, ethnic, or national identities, I personally believe that our roots are deeper than those comparatively superficial allegiances. If it is true that we have souls that experience multiple lifetimes, then our racial, cultural, and gender identities are temporary constructs, and it is foolish to over-identify with what are impermanent roles in the stage plays of our lives.

Are we Russian or Ukrainian, French or American, male or female, rich or poor? Yes. And no.

I appreciate my parents for the love they gave me, the good homes and education they provided me, and the healthy genes they passed on to me. But to my way of thinking, my soul was not created by them, and I existed way before I was conceived. If my parents had never met, I still would have been born at some other time and place to different parents, in circumstances of my choosing, for the purpose of soul growth and evolution.

So to Henry Louis Gates, Vladimir Putin, and Marine Le Pen, my message is this: if you want to find and celebrate your real roots, consider the words of Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”