Past Lives, Future Selves
One day I will be an ancestor. To whom, I’m not quite sure–but surely to someone. This realization has been quietly occupying more and more space within me. Time (I recently discovered) does this funny thing where it collapses on you once you realize that you exist in the past, presently, and far into the future.
Our DNA moves through time, each life altering the genetic sequence as it gets passed along from person to person. Each mutation an imprint of the life that contained it. The energy of us persists, recycling and reshaping, over and over. Be it into another or into the earth. In that way I suppose we could never fully cease to exist, we simply change form.
And so we are tethered between timelines. One hand pulling the past forward, the other outstretched, longing. Somehow residing exactly in between. I call upon my ancestors sometimes. For guidance and protection. And somewhere in time exists an altar with my photo on it. A fragrant flower, a small seashell. In me, they search for wisdom.
It’s true too, that there is a curse I carry. The same one the women before me were plagued with. Heavy and hard. But if curses are real, then so must be blessings, because one cannot exist in the absence of the other. I have been asking myself what they might make of this life of mine, of my mother’s before me. What gifts do I have to offer my descendants?
The gifts we offer, I believe, are the same ones we offer to ourselves.
Legacies are not the lives we’ve yet to live. It’s the life we are already living. The dreams we transmute into reality are the tales that will be told of us. Our future is already unfolding. Our willingness to live is what breathes life into all who come after us. Our kindness, our resilience. The joy we radiate, the tears we shed. The cycles we break so that new ones may flourish in its place.
There is a light that seeps through the cracks of my lineage. Glowing soft and warm. In the smile of my grandmother, in the passion of my mother. Flickering, faintly, but growing stronger. The darkness remains, of course. It cannot be undone. But the light is defiant. And the light is wise. Its wisdom is available to me because it is from me. For as much as we inherit pain, so too we inherit love.
The light is the gift. Shining, courageously.