Would you rather?

Writing assignment from Christian Writers Workshop.

Assignment: Would you rather have a conversation with your great-great-great grandparent or your great-great-great-grandchild?

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This question was relatively easy for me given that I do not have children of my own so interviewing a great-great-great-grandchild is off the table. Yes, I do have step-kids and yes, I could simply imagine a hypothetical, but my brain is way to logical to do that. Great-great-great Grandparent it is!

The more I thought about it, the more this would have been my answer anyway. I did know my Great Grandma Alice for a bit of my life, she died when I was in college, so interviewing her mothers (or fathers), mother or father would be absolutely fascinating. My Great Grandma Alice was born in 1910 in Germany, which would put her grandparent potentially being born or at least living most of their life in the mid 1800's. I know a bit about US History during that time, but very little knowledge of Germany during the 1800's.

I would love to understand what every day life was like then and what the common struggles were. How did people get their information? What were communities like? Did they travel? What did they eat? What did they read? What did they think of their leaders? What were their families like?

150-ish years doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if you really think about what this conversation might look like, it would likely feel like we were on different planets. Would we even be able to understand each other? Things are so vastly different now than they were then...

But I also can't help but think of the one common denominator that would likely bring us together - our human-ness. Today's world of international travel, the internet, social media, fast fashion, celebrity culture and geo-political distress feels like light years of difference between what life must have looked like during that time. But at the center of our world and theirs, humans were there feeling joy, sadness, anger, frustration, and hope. Working hard, creating families, learning about the past in order to make a better future are surely things we would have in common. Contemplating our own existence and our relationship with God, the creator of the Universe is common ground for many generations past and will continue for the foreseeable future.

Have you ever driven a different route than you normally do and then noticed a building or a store that you never saw before? It always blows my mind when this happens. How did I miss that? It's been right there in front of my face this whole time and I never noticed! That is the power of perspective. Getting out of your bubble and looking at things from a different direction expands your understanding of the world and your place in it. I would imagine my great-great-great grandparent might think their life and experiences inconsequential or simple compared to what we are experiencing now, but I'm quite sure that the perspective they would be able to offer from their life experience would benefit me far more than they could even imagine.

I would love to sit for an afternoon with my great-great-great grandparent and ask them a million questions about what life was like then because at the end of the day, knowing and understanding the past will always help lead to a better and brighter future.

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