We are born, we live, and we die. So what? The first we have little control over. The second is something we are supposed to have some control over, to varying degrees. The last one, we once again have little or no control over. My question today has to do with what comes after all three – DEATH.
Once you are dead, what is the point of it all? I found myself asking this question after I started investigating my own family tree. Very early on in my poking around, I discovered some ancestors who had lived lives that were sometimes exciting, traumatic, happy, and even downright tragic. Everyone has a story. You have a story. I have a story. They had stories. But now, years and generations after their deaths, who knows them? Who knows their stories? Who remembers or speaks about them? And, at the end of the day, does any of it really matter?
Do you (lovely person reading this) know if you are re-living the same life-story, working the same career, or having the same talents as one of your now long-dead family members? Perhaps knowing the story of those ancestors who lived the same life in an earlier generation has lessons for you today. Perhaps knowing could help you avoid some pitfalls they experienced or encourage you to follow a dream because you know someone who carried the same dream and made it happen. Or maybe they failed, and now it is your turn to try to make it come true.
Could it be that the person repeating the same life story today is, in some way or to some degree, a reincarnation or part reincarnation of their long dead relative? Do we come back to correct a mistake, make a different decision at a crossroads of life, grab the opportunity to experience something better, – live a life again, but this time with a happier ending?
I don’t know. I am merely posing a question that is on my mind.
And now I wonder. When I am dead and gone – what will the point of my life have been? Will anyone remember that I ever existed? Most of us are neither famous nor infamous; does this mean that a generation after we die, it will be as though we never lived? Who remembers their grandparents? How many of us even know the names of our great grandparents, much less their stories? It’s not that it particularly matters to me whether I am remembered or not; rather, my question is, “If I have not left a footprint in life, what was I doing? Was it all a waste of time. Was I a waste of time and space?
What brings up these questions for me now? The unwritten stories of my own ancestors and the 162 photos of the family of Mohamed Ali Pasha, which now adorn the walls of my downstairs sitting room at Mara House. That is what is bringing up these questions for me now.
Call it synchronicity, but I only just started reading a book I bought 10 years ago by Catherine Shainberg called “Kabbalah and The Power of Dreaming – Awakening the Visionary Life“. She writes about how everyone sees life through the lens of perception, much of it based on our own personal experiences. But here, for me, is the interesting part –
“The most powerful and constant disruption to pure perception is our GENETIC makeup,” and goes on to say, “The destiny of man is to fully embody the potential offered by the genetic structure that is given to him. Each human being incarnates to fulfill that purpose. But human beings respond to their environment, they have the power of choice, and they function on many different levels.”
I find that interesting because, in researching my own family tree and finding similarities down through the generations, I began to take the thought, “I am the culmination of all their hopes and dreams,” rather seriously. And with that thought, I also began to feel a responsibility to do better, not to let them down, to hold onto and build upon whatever they had tried to establish for the family. My direct ancestors had been evicted from a small farm on the side of the road, in Ireland during famine times. But they survived and more – that is a story for another place and time.
Leaving my burning question aside 🙂 what about the 162 + beautiful photos on the wall downstairs? There is a story behind each one, and they are haunting me to hurry up and finish printing off their stories for you. I hope when you come to Mara House, you will be as interested in and intrigued by their stories as I am. While the Pharaohs are remembered on the walls of the Tombs and Temples of Egypt, Mohamed Ali and his descendants are now remembered on the walls of Mara House Luxor.
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