This vignette is fun and sad at the same time, but it inspired me to a few reflections...
Today we find ourselves struggling to find info about our ancestors; each and every little bit we find is extremely valuable to us. We look at pictures and we wonder where they were taken, unless we are lucky enough to find info on the back of it, or to have a family member that remembers the story behind it. We try to understand who our ancestors were through the pictures, through their heirlooms, if lucky, through their diaries...
Still, it always feel like we don't have enough information.
Will our descendants feel the same about us?
Many of us share pictures and stories through facebook, blogs and other social networks, but how many of these pictures and stories tell who we really are?
By the time our descendants will come along, there will be so much information that they might actually get overwhelmed if not bored in the end and not be so interested in our story after all.
Even if they are really eager to know more about their ancestors, and will go through our whole facebook account, what will they find? Thousands of links shared? Copy and paste of other people's status? Games played? A gazillion pictures?
Which of these incredible amount of data will really tell what we think?
How will they know what was really important to us? How will they learn from our experiences?
How will they know our testimony?
Even in the cyber era, a book will be the true and tested means to pass our heritage on.
When our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and their descendants will find and go through it, they will understand that if we took the time to put it together, it must have really been important to us.
Whether it is a hardbound book you publish once a year or every 5 years, a scrapbook with pages to update from time to time, whether it is a collection of your traditions, of your recipes, of your achievements, of your very own spiritual thoughts, or all of these and more, I urge you to start writing your personal story, and take a few minutes every week to describe at least the most important pictures of your life so that your descendants will not have to rely on the cyberspace to know who you are.
1 comment:
Ohhh yes! I've thought about this. Too much info on me on the Internet. Gotta be boring. But I am writing all the family stories I can as quickly as I can. THAT is what I'm hoping they will find. And when they do, they will KNOW what was important to me. :-D
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