How Important Is Knowing Your Ancestry to You?

At the time, I didn’t know how significant this simple act would be in my life: expectorating into a vile and sending it off to a company to analyze. However, the results demonstrated that this was information I was longing to know: where my family originated. Stories of ancestry, genealogy, and origin are passed down through generations, and that isn’t different in my family. Although hearing the stories enriched my life as a child, giving me a platform for my identity to stem from, I knew that these stories were just that. They gave me a glimpse into a reality that I knew nothing about, a part of a picture that would never complete, blurry at best. It wasn’t that I distrusted my family’s accounts, but I knew there had to be more than what was told. And sure enough, in 2018, all of these speculations I had were confirmed when I got back my results.

Questions

Have you ever wanted to know more about your ancestry? How important is knowing your ancestry to you? Have you ever wondered where your true ties lie within diversity, communities, and the world? Do you ever feel like an imposter trying to be part of cultural events while not knowing where you stand? Contemplating these questions may make you wonder how much of your history and ancestry you don’t know. For other people, this aspect of themselves is irrelevant and they feel as though their identity lies with what they know rather than what they don’t. Some people don’t need to look at their life as tiny ants under a magnifying glass to determine how each piece of their lives connects. I just wasn’t content with this mystery that surrounded life, deeming me worthy for investigation by no one other than Sherlock Holmes. 

Putting the pieces together

I grew up believing that I was Italian. That was it. While the results were consistent with that statement, I was more than just Italian. I was connected to specific groups of people within the country and it tied me to numerous countries I believed I had no affiliation with. I was content knowing my background and how diverse I was. Scrolling through the percentages wasn’t as boring as it might sound because I was learning how my family and I fit into a larger context of “history”. For some people, science is not as enticing of a force as it is in mine. It was like picking up the fractured pieces of a Mosaic and finally getting to understand how each of the pieces contributed to the larger understanding and meaning of the whole. Communities of different people, of different countries and cultures, carved out a path they followed, and here I am trying to navigate it. 

Hesitation

These days with technology being so pervasive in our lives, it isn’t surprising that people would be reluctant to get their DNA tested. With all of the data collected on each of us, people may be against voluntarily giving up their DNA to a company whose goal is to ultimately make a profit. There are also numerous reasons why people would not want to do this because they are afraid of what they will find behind closed doors. However, I didn’t see it this way. I felt this was an opportunity to learn about my ancestry and by doing so, to learn more about my family and build connections with them. To me, it was serious, because being from somewhere was a part of my identity, not a malleable, arbitrary construct based on a hunch or mere speculatory thought. But, by all means, if you can get the validation you need without this methodology, then you should. 

Appreciation

Learning this aspect of myself has led me to have a new appreciation for different cultures and how different each of us is. Don’t get me wrong, I am against pointing to differences to divide ourselves in a negative and discriminatory way. However, this experience for me has led to a desire to expand my knowledge and learn more about the history and the experiences of different people. If anything, I now see how enriched our minds can become by broadening our horizons. We can be content with ourselves and the knowledge we know now, but without seeing the significance and meaning behind our actions, behavior, and lives I think we as people will become stagnant. Appreciate your heritage, appreciate your history, and appreciate opening your mind to new knowledge that can shape how you see the world!