What’s in Your Blood?
Kristen, Adam, and "Great"
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Indiana. It was a big deal as I had not seen most of them for close to ten years and nobody on that side of my family had even met my wife.
The greatest part of the trip was spending time with my 96 year old Great Grandmother. “Great,” as we call her, has always been a part of my life and I have fond memories of staying at her house as a child.
What made this recent visit so amazing is that I got the opportunity to get to know Great through my wife. We were blessed with story after story about her life; stories I either forgot or had no idea about. When you’re a child you’re very much in the present and the Great in front of me was the only Great I needed to know.
Now, as an adult, I was surprised at the history that was unfolding before me as I was able to be “re-introduced” to such a wonderful woman. I could make this a post about the importance of family history and my new-found respect for it but that’s for a different day. Instead I would like to share a different lesson.
I always knew that I came from a typical mid-western, blue collar family. But Great taught me so much more. I learned that I come from generation after generation of hard workers most of whom held two jobs well in to old age. My grandfathers would find themselves working jobs after retirement just out of a need to stay productive. There was even an instance where a doughnut shop was purchased and everyone went to work there too! That’s a long story itself. Great was no different. She held multiple jobs around town in addition to raising a family. As a woman of that era she was pretty ground breaking.
On the other side of my family, it’s pretty much the same story. My wonderful Grandfather was a minister in a time where you would preach on Sunday and then go to work with a hammer and nails, assembling the actual church building on Monday. My uncle once referred to it as an era where “building a church” actually meant building a church. After retirement he would then go to work as a handyman helping widows around the neighborhood. (He actually built the house they lived in with his own hands.)
I’ve always wondered why I don’t know how to quit or why I don’t know how NOT to give 100%. I’ve often thought about why, in a world where people want the easiest route, I’m cool working hard if it’s something worth working hard for. I’ve thought about retirement and the idea of sitting on a couch doing nothing doesn’t seem realistic to me.
I once had a friend say that he was inspired by the fact that I seem to “work hard at everything I do.” Now I have a better understanding of why that is. It’s in my blood. I come from a long line of people who don’t know how to only give 50%, who don’t know how NOT to go the extra mile and who value working hard for something that matters. It’s who I am, it’s what I do.
Understanding this gave me a new found sense of pride in my family and in myself. It’s inspiring and it’s very motivating.
Your family history often dictates who you are. What are the traits you can value both in your history and in yourself?
Find them, take pride in them and use them to motivate you.
