Ancestor: (n) — a person, typically one more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended.

I certainly am glad that all my ancestors decided to have sex, so they would set in motion the possibility of my existence.

After all, it’s pretty miraculous. After working twelve-hour days in the fields, planting, cultivating and harvesting, they were exhausted after sunset, and must have had pretty good libidos to have worked up the energy to culminate the day with hanky-panky.

So for that I am grateful.

I know there are people who are very sentimental about their lineage and pay good money to acquire information on their family tree. But honestly, if I had known my ancestors, I would be very disappointed because they probably wouldn’t like me.

• Their work ethic was stronger than mine–mainly because they had to survive. And I talk about words like “success.”
• They died much younger than me from exhaustion and lack of healthy choices and medical care. During that shortened life span, they probably suffered more pain due to overexertion.
• They had bigotries and prejudices which I would have found annoying or ignorant, which they might have misinterpreted as rude behavior.
• Their spirituality was peppered with superstition instead of salted with knowledge and faith.
• They controlled their lives through morality, which was regionally defined, and also locally monitored and enforced.
• They weren’t in favor of new-fangled gadgets, often resisting them until such discoveries were forced on them by city councils or national laws.
• My ancestors revered ignorance as a badge of honor and the symbol of their faithfulness to a God they truly did not understand.

There was much good about them. Their hard-headed, strong-willed and determined natures made it possible for them to survive the wilderness, which I now call a freeway.

But the disregard for the progress of history and the rights of people would have rendered me a radical and a renegade in their midst.

I believe it’s possible to be grateful and at the same time, fully aware that I was born in the right time and the right place to do the right thing–so that my descendants will not have to look back and giggle too much … at my stupidity. 

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix