I spent most of yesterday in the forest with my ex. I'm glad I took advantage of the reasonable temperature. Forest was nice. Trees good.
I was nerding out on twin strangers, doppelgangers that apparently everyone has about 7 of somewhere around the world but is unlikely to ever meet. It was interesting because at least one identical pair wasn't even the same ethnicity. Then I learned about a pair of maternal twins (it's funny we say maternal, as if paternal twins is an option), with a mixed race mother who gave birth to one "black" and one "white" child, although they were obviously genetically identical. Of course there were unfathomably stupid people in the comments who did not grasp that the "white" girl was just as black as the "black" girl and vice versa.
This is the world multiethnic people are up against. Nevermind our ancestors, our genes, our histories, our families, or our cultures. People so desperately want us to betray ourselves and assimilate if we're anything lighter than pitch black (with good intentions of unification, i.e. "You're just American!") but it's forced identification with the colonizer, rather than the other way around. And I find that bias interesting, because people don't realize the slavery origins of labeling someone as "passing." If you need to deny your heritage in exchange for privilege, that's racist, and you're being groomed by the oppressor. It's actually taken me half a lifetime to be able to put words to my experience. I wish I'd realized it sooner, instead of just feeling sad and kind of orphaned by it.
Before that tangent I meant to say how I was waxing poetic to my ex about my current infatuation with the ancient Phoenicians, and then I found out he is a descendant of them, according to dna evidence, because he's part Mizrahi. Funny how we gravitate toward the things we do. I don't know whether I am Phoenician, but they settled in many of the same places my ancestors were. I did always feel with him that in some past life or many lifetimes we were together, and I remember writing a poem 20 years ago about searching for him for thousands of years in every lifetime, wandering the planet, before finally finding him here in my last life. Yeah, I'm a bit of a romantic. But some people feel like a reunion when you meet them for the first time.
Which reminds me! There's been quite a few studies showing similar patterns, but one I discovered yesterday was about how the descendants of mice inherited highly specific fears based on a trauma experienced by their male ancestor for up to 7 generations! Even mice birthed in vitro with no contact with their father avoided the thing (a scent that the father learned to associate with electric shock. Animal cruelty, ugh.)
But wow. Because there's also been studies of descendants of Holocaust survivors basically inheriting ptsd, and generational trauma is obviously a thing. But I think its true of non-traumatic histories too. It explains a lot about why I've always gravitated toward things before finding out my great grandparents did those things too, and might explain the dreams I've had that led me to discovering some of my roots that were kept secret. How else would I have known that?
We are literally made of our ancestors. I listened to a podcast from Sadhguru who said this is the time of year when we actually should distance ourselves from our ancestors -- only a bit. Because he said they are dead and their destinies are fixed. Our life is their rebirth, a clean slate, and we shouldn't let ourselves be controlled by whoever our ancestors were because our lives belong to us now.
I feel a lot of comfort from ancestors, but he has a good point. My whole angle is more like, I am motivated to heal myself if I feel that I'm healing generations of ancestors who couldn't heal. Everything I do for myself, I'm really doing it for them, as their incarnation in this timeline.
I think I need to get an account on Medium or something. The reduced socializing has given me increased desire to share my thoughts in words, to the point where it's maybe excessive for a journal. It's my diary and I can use it however I choose of course, but, maybe I could use that desire to share in other ways too, to put my obsessions to good use, to propel achievement in some more "professional" form. But where and what I don't know, because my interests vary and are always fluctuating. I'd need a lot of freedom to follow my bliss and dabble in everything... How else can one grow?
7:58 a.m. - 2020-12-08