I’ve been waiting a long time for the time to write this. My hours have been filled with editing essay, studying special relativity, nursing a hurt wrist, celebrating winter and craving superficial gifts.

This idea has been hauntly lingering in my head in the midst of the holiday celebration. It’s something I’m not sure if I’ll be able to convey through written word, but something I can no longer fail to try.

How is it that we attach to our relationship to the world around us? What is it, other than the external coordinates that make us who we are? Why is it that we crave for exactly what we do not have, and we are incredibly good at doing the unhealthy? Why is it that instead of creating a productive supportive society, we’ve created a community that focuses on wealth, objects, selfishness and ignorance? And why is it that we are not constantly begging this question?

This lengthy question started with a wonderment of maiden names. I’m fully aware it’s for simplest sakes. But I can’t help feeling as though it promotes a disconnection from our ancestors, and therefore a disconnection to ourselves. (When I say ourselves, I don’t mean the superficial idea of our selves, but really where we came from.) I was lucky enough to have a mother that gave me her last name as well as my dads. And I think this affected me more than she knows. Instead of only in relation, I get to feel connected to my mom’s side of the family through pronunciation, arrangement of letters and the culture that came with “Hoog.” But for most people, and for the much more extraneous parts of my family, the origins of existence are so easily forgotten. Why is it that we feel the need to completely disconnect ourselves from the struggles of the past? Making our a heritage full of strangers instead of loved ones. My mom once said to me, “Daughters want to be the opposite of their mothers. So in two generations you have a similar person derived from wanting to be the opposite, therefore the same, of what came before them.” I never want to forget how much I don’t want to be like my mother, but how much that may make me like my grandma. And I’m so thankful I get to share my name with that wonderful women at the end of her life. And it make me wonder, why is it a societal norm to only keep the father’s name? Because men are more important of course! But what about your mothers father? And his bother? And their dad? Aren’t they men? I think we are loosing the essence of linage. Does this mean we should all have ten last names? Maybe. But this also means that we get to have a sense of connectivity to the world around us for the world before us. We get to love the people that gave us our life the way it is. Everyday I thank for all the things that had to be exactly perfect for my to exist in this moment in time. Let’s pray and honor and cherish that.

I think when we come to terms with the understanding that we are merely a dot on a huge family tree we get to finally wake up. Letting go the things around us that we’ve decided define us. To connect to something bigger. This something bigger is a human community, in which we are constantly striving to make the world a better place. I think if everyone was humbled, truly humbled, by where they came from the world around us would be full of altruism and empathy. Connecting to where we came from and understanding that includes more than family lineage, but the earth. We would be thinking about fracking instead of twerking. We would be communicating instead of starting wars. We would grow our meals instead of poising them. We would find a practice to simplify the thoughts, instead of watching the news to disguise them. We would be humbled by the humus around us, the earth. We would  love al other humans for we would realize what is within ourselves is within them. We would find our truth our happiness in the midst of taking care of the people around us. We would find the answer to my question.