Lasers in the Jungle.

It used to be much easier to write about what has been troubling me. I attribute my difficulty in expression to aging, as it is much more common for upset to come bursting out of youth than it is for more mature persons. Not to say that I am mature, just more so than I have been before. I am also more measured about what I say as one has to be more careful than ever about being hung by your own words.

I have been doing a significant amount of genealogical research lately, and it has left me possessing equal parts of depression and interest. Interest because to figure out what people did and where they lived that are related to you is very interesting. It is even more interesting when you become the person that knows the most about your family despite not having the benefit of age relative to the rest of my family.

It is also depressing because many people in my family seemed to die young and worked (or lived) hard lives. They lived in parts of Saint Paul that were as rough then as they are now, but in conditions that were far worse. Depressing also because the only record of many of the people in the tree is their birth, and it is unknown what happened to them thereafter. Anyone who is old enough to fill in the details have left this life many years ago.

Ultimately, it does not matter who were my relatives. I don't have any particular need to know what country anyone came from, because that especially matters the least to me. I find that I am most interested their American experience, as that is where the most interesting part of the story begins. Additionally, I never found much value in splicing what kind of American I am by hyphenating my ancestor's country of origin with "American." What does it mean to be "German-American" really? If Germany was so great for my relatives, why would they have left? Likely it was difficult in the country of origin and so there is no sense in acknowledging and valuing a place from which my people left. Perhaps more importantly, we have forged a new culture in America that really owes its existence to the amalgamation of cultures, and not the singling out of any one. Lastly, indicating the country of origin of ancestors only serves to divide, when we so much need to unite as a nation.

Perhaps more depressing still is the desire to want to turn back the clock 10 years. I have had this wish for many years, and it has not subsided very much. I have been told that this is not a healthy attitude to possess, which is probably true. I have been told that there is a lot to look forward in life and things will be wonderful in the future. All I see are more challenges, difficulties, and responsibilities without the attendant rewards. All I see is hardness.

Then again, three installments of Back of the Future has instructed us about the dangers of time travel. Although, things worked out much better for Marty all in all, as his family dysfunction seemed to dissolve due to his facilitation of certain material facts of his parents past. Even if we could time travel, how much it would cheapen life as those clutch decisions that we make, the ones that we make in stressful and labored environment would be meaningless since we would know that we could always go back and change what we did. As Sheen said, a game is no fun unless there is a chance of losing. A lime without tartness is just a bad orange.

Let's see if I have a dream about a bad orange. If I do, that will teach me to never again come up with such an awful expression again.