WE ARE ...

WE ARE ......

We are what we are because of who we are and where we are. I have often thought that I have lived in the best of all possible times. My segment in time has allotted me the many opportunities that I currently enjoy as a human living in America in  the twenty-first century.

But what if I had appeared in my ancestral Scotland 1000 years ago; or in my ancestral Northern Europe (Germany) 500 years ago; or  as a Kalahari bushman in Africa 100 years ago; or as a Jew in Palestine 300 years ago; or as a member of the Shawnee indian tribe in Eastern North America 500 years ago; or as a Mongolian today? Everything about me would be different. I would look different. I would have different experiences. I would feel differently about my surroundings, other people, animals, plants, food, work, pleasure, religion.

If I had lived deep in the past, I would now be blind (I have a degenerative eye disease that only modern medicine can help).

I had an appendicitis at age 34 when I had three young children and emergency surgery saved my life. Had this happened in Scotland a 1000 years ago, I would probably have died from a burst appendix.

I am lucky to be alive here, now, in this segment of time.

I believe the life force we all carry first appeared on Planet Earth about 3,800,000,000 years ago. This spark of life was first started as an experiment by the Creator and we (all life forms) who inhabit Earth are the current holders of the light. As living beings we do not create new life, we merely pass it on to the next generation. What this means is that the original spark of life has been carried by organisms from 3.8 billion years ago until now. 

Think about this. How many Y's or FORKS in the road did our ancestors face. One path led to death and destruction and the other to survival and living.  Literally millions of times our predecessors faced adversities and survived, others at the same time faced those same problems and died.  We and everything alive on Earth today are the survivors. This is WHO WE ARE.

I  was born in 1940 and grew up on  a dairy farm in a quiet valley in rural Pennsylvania. Our pacifist Amish and Mennonite neighbors did not present a threat to social order and in many ways we were isolated from the problems of the outside world; protected as it were from the real world. Had I been born in Japan, Germany, Palestine, South Africa or China on that date my life would have been much different.We are very much a product of  WHERE WE ARE.