[Blog Entry] Tracing Your Genealogy

Tracing Your Genealogy

Have you ever traced your family tree? If I were to embark upon a quest to investigate my genealogy, it would be a venture that ends too soon. My father’s father was adopted, his heritage lost in the labyrinth of time. The purity of my Chinese blood would probably be in question if it weren’t for the fact that my grandfather was born in China, and that the legacy of his Chinese forefathers bred true.

Ignorance of the past bestows a certain sense of freedom. One’s imagination is let loose, for my ancestors can literally be anyone. Where they emperors of their time, or perhaps honorable and noble warriors? Maybe my great great grandfather was sired by Lung dragons, or my great great grandmother the concubine of a shape shifting spirit.

But a part of you will always be missing, a past that may unknowingly haunt your present. At the back of your mind, whenever you woo a beautiful girl, you ask yourself, is she a distant cousin? Or when you shout a thousand different curses at your hated enemy, are you condemning your own relative?

Amidst all the uncertainty, one is perhaps given a gift, a boon so many crave. Few people are ever born with a blank slate, bereft of any expectations, deprived of a haunting or indebted lineage. The only past one has is whatever one makes of the present.