Family Ties

I think my life is an improvisation on the lives of my parents and grandparents and even great-great-great-grandparents.  There is no way for me to know from what I spin.  But I'm very curious about the beginnings of motivations, of values, of traditions and practices.  What brings discipline into a family, what brings honesty?  What brings cutting corners, and frugality?  It would seem that anyone's environment might press upon them and that these fears and confidences might be taught to one's children in one's tone of voice, in their gait, in the space between their words.  There are things that we can consciously see be given to us from our parents, or which we can more consciously rebel against–religion, politics, car brand loyalty.  But in addition to these things, I think there is a texture to human interaction that we can unknowingly learn.  I'm curious as to where it begins.  I'm curious as to how much we must live it and how much we can find ourselves the product of our own environment.  In every generation, there are so many new factors.  There are new ways of communicating, new ways of traveling, new ways of eating and exercising.  We come in to contact with new parts of the world, new ideas.  And the environment presses upon us.  The past is there, but so is the present and the future.  How much do we take in from these various sources?  From where do I learn to be the person that I am?  

It is interesting for me to listen to my parents and grandparents speak of themselves and the way they became, the life they lived.  There is something there for me to understand myself.  And perhaps with that I can understand how I make sense of the world in a more objective way, in a way that can be of better service to the people around me.  Family is such an interesting thing.  Society is such an interesting thing.  There is no center to it, no beginning, and no ending.  Just transitions and riffs on what came before.