Yesterday I made some progress in accessing my web site with the cPlan software I am now supposed to use I take it. I did upload a file, but found the user interface much more complicated than my old trusty FileZilla. The jury is still out on this, but I’ll probe cPlan a little more.

Next I moved on to select some photos to print off for Annie to go along with her birthday card. This progressed well until a got a call from the Physio office that I’d forgotten my appointment. They kindly rescheduled me for two pm. This kind of took care of my afternoon, since I left at 1:30pm and returned at about three, taking the bus since downtown parking is expensive.

Next came wrapping the present for John, Tammy and Annie which was complicated since I wanted to avoid the bag and tissue approach for the presents from Holland, but used it for Annie’s birthday present. This was a sweater my sister Tieneke and I had bought at H&M in Zeist, NL. Annie liked the sweater, but it was hardly big enough for her at nine, even though the size was for the years 10 to 12. My addition of a little fold up bag also hit the spot.

The birthday card, signed in Holland by my siblings whose photos I’d printed off was a success, as were the purse for Tammy, the pocket agenda with Dutch tile illustration for John and the wall calendar and stick with cupped tea light candle holders. The visit was just right for half an hour at seven thirty pm, which is just before Annie’s bedtime.

I say enigmatic, because my Dad on his visits here, never even mentioned all the work he was doing except for the calligraphy.

Late in the evening I did some more sorting, this time of old family trees and records that my Dad worked on for years, but which I’d never looked at since 2003, when they’d landed in my lap. My siblings did not know what to do with these documents and since I am the oldest and a son, I inherited this unexpected and enigmatic gift. I say enigmatic, because my Dad on his visits here, never even mentioned all the work he was doing except for the

calligraphy. He mentioned that it was related to the big ’Staten bible’, but never mentioned all the investigations he made.

So, last night I made quite an unexpected discovery and wondered what could have motivated him to such an extend. One late letter is dated in 1991, which was five years before his passing and a year after my parents last visit here in Calgary at his age of 82, when we lived at 3528- 36Ave SW .

This morning, at around five or earlier I slumbered until about six am, when I got up. In that slumber time I was going over the discovery I made the night before of records relating to a part of my family history that had so much occupied my Dad towards the end of his life.

I kept kind of hovering over this family tree image that in places went all the way back to ca. 700AD. I mulled over the idea of having such roots in a general way. It fascinates, but what is it that does? Is it my looking for an identity, formulating, adding on to it? I could sense that once you would give in to this fascination of identity, you’d become more and more engaged. I could sense the lure of it, feel its promise of treasure yet to be discovered.

However, I also realised several other aspects. First of all my Dad had only investigated his mother’s branch of the family and ignored his own father’s side! Was this, because my Dad lost his mother when he was a toddler and never really knew her? He and his sister - my late aunt Stien [d.2007] - were mothered by his father’s sister Hendrika, capable and caring, but emotionally very closed, as I and my siblings remember her. My grandfather remarried much later, but by that time my Dad was well into his adolescence.

Secondly I know that modern genetic research has discovered that a child inherits only one quarter of the genes of each parent. So, if you go back even just four generations or about one hundred years, you are talking about a minimal ancestral influence; let alone going back three or four hundred.

To this I want to add my own observation from the time of my late twenties, when I noticed that all family tree research tends to stop with the discovery of a person of social importance, but never with a robber or thief. This points to the idea that we search for identity when we are engaged in this kind of activity. A search to fill a hole that we feel somewhere in our own life.

Finally it should be noted that family trees never ends, but keep going back until we leave the realm of modern humanity and enter into the mist of human ancestry. This seems to constitute a wild growth of exploring possibilities until an efficient combination surfaces, which then multiplies to outpace and replace all the others.

But, I am not yet done with my thoughts on this search for roots and identity that has been triggered by my sorting and rummaging through old records last night. I started to compare my Dad’s searching, which also involved his reading the New Testament, with my own searching. Its subject matter is the history of human traditions, religion and value systems. This search of mine also involves rootedness as it were, but of our humanity as a whole.

I am not the only one doing this either, there are many others. And, if we look at the whole of modern human activities we note a relentless search for discovery and a drive to find out. What my Dad did in his life, I do in mine and many others do as well, appears to be a typical human activity of discovery, to define identity and formulate meaning.

This process parallels the evolution of the human species, which in its early stage searched empirically for a stable and functioning species until the most successful combination emerged. This is the time that our own species emerged, called ‘homo sapiens’ in an optimistic mood.

This species I see now engaged in a search of its own to discover and define its own identity and meaning for its existence. That is driving this collective search activity that we are engaged in.

Fighting for and defending one’s own identity as a person and community is a natural and necessary activity, but…

What will we discover? Maybe this first necessary discovery is the realisation that we are engaged in and subject to this very search process. This involves a going back to our own roots and learning how we emerged as a species and how we formulated our societies over time until we arrive at the present. This is our search as I see it, with many making contributions and discovering possibilities.

What is different for us as a species now, is that we are conscious of this process of development and must first learn to understand it, before we can proceed without fighting for dominance of our particular value frame work.

Fighting for and defending one’s own identity as a person and community is a natural and necessary activity, but fighting for dominance is destructive as all variations must contribute to the mix for it to be sufficiently robust and versatile to continue
<9:35am and 10:07am with the edit~