Why Did We Choose Our Family?

My cousin recently mailed me copies of some DVDs that contained footage from films that her father had taken over the years.

Almost everyone in the DVDs had passed on and a lot of the footage contained my uncle’s in-laws and friends – people that I no longer remembered or never knew.

So over the weekend I edited the films down to just one DVD to pass on to my own children and grandchildren. The edited DVD contains my grandparents, parents and family.

Within the edited footage,  I added freeze frames with text about the family tree connections and who the people in the scenes were so that my grandchildren would hopefully value the film.

As I looked at footage of my parents when they were newly married, of my grandparents still young, of weddings, picnics, vacations and holidays  – I thought of how the films always showed them all smiling, happy and celebrating life. But was that how it really was?

No. They had good times, but they also had struggles, disappointments, disagreements, challenges, broken dreams and their times of grief.

For example, my grandmother was made a young widow when my grandfather died at the age of 54. At the time, my grandmother may have thought that her life was over, but in actuality she lived nearly 40 more years, had two more marriages, and several great and great-great grandchildren.

There is also some footage of my father, smiling and waving at the camera, belying the fact that during that year he had survived eleven major surgeries. At that time, would he have believed that he would live another 30 years and live to see his  grandchildren become adults? I doubt it.

In viewing the edited footage, I realized that, for the most part my parents and grandparents were younger than I am now. It dawned on me how quickly life passes and that in another generation, most of the film could become worthless, the people captured by the film forgotten. Their influence on myself and my own children and grandchildren, not realized.

But what was their legacy? What were their dreams and hopes? What made them act, react and think the way they did? What were their core values and beliefs?

“If I have seen further it is only
by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
~ Sir Isaac Newton

We take the baton, so to speak, from our forefathers and we carry it until we can hand it off to our children and grandchildren.

Hopefully, I will have helped them move  beyond and further and higher than from where I stood when I began.

How am I doing? I wondered. Have I taken what my ancestors handed me and grown from there?

“The way you evolve is from where you now are standing on your current platform, and a large part of your current platform equals a large part of your current vibration— that’s what your belief system is.” ~ Abraham-Hicks

As I looked at some of the footage of myself as an infant I thought, “Why did I choose to be born into that family? How was I shaped and influenced by them? What was my life plan? What were my hopes and dreams? What is my legacy to my grandchildren?”

We may someday be forgotten… just faces in a video that no one knows. Part of photo albums that rot and decay. Part of images that get deleted from memory.

But our essence, our energy lives on, not just in the Spiritual realms, but within those who follow us.

We are all energy – energetically connected. What we do each day matters. And how we live – most importantly how we love – influences greatly those who have come after us – and those who are still waiting in the wings to be born.

“Love lifts us up where we belong.” ~ Will Jennings

How can we help uplift ourselves and our descendants? By pondering more on what’s great about our life. By being grateful for what is. By telling a new story – about the good that we desire.  By being thankful for our life.

By taking the time to get quiet and get the inner guidance that can help us align with our highest good. By raising our own energy vibration through our prayers, meditation and imagination so that we magnetize into our lives what we truly desire – for the greatest good of all concerned.

So that our life – and those who follow us – can live more awesome lives – moving beyond the platform from whence we came.

As we move beyond and higher than the shoulders that carried us, we carry with us the hopes and dreams of our ancestors. And we honor them and in some way, in some energetic connection, I believe that they too are uplifted.

The celluloid films may degrade or become lost. But the energy of the life force lasts forever.

It’s all energy. It’s all about Love.

Did we Choose Our Parents?