We Are the Inheritors, The Living Evidence of Hope
If you stop to think about it, we as a collective humanity, in this moment, are the inheritors of the survivors.
Today, you are alive, breathing and many living in privilege because of the all before.
In our very short evolution as humans, a relatively small slice of time on this Earth (even if only at hundreds of thousands of years)- have experienced chaos. Many of us still are.
We’ve maimed and killed our family over belief systems and colors. Yet, every one of our ancestors lived long enough to carry on to you.
They lived through enslavement, oppression, genocide, wars, self suppression, poverty and near starvation for you to be here today. What are the chances?
Right here in this moment. We all share this privilege of survivorship.
Right now, we are the inheritors of this world, the survivors of our lineage.
Many of us live like kings. If they could only see us now!
Running water in our homes, heat, food at our fingertips, comfort in all shapes and forms.
Fresh water! I didn’t have to haul it from the river today. Heat! I didn’t have to go out and get firewood in the freezing cold. I woke up warm, with a glass of tap water beside my bed, in safety and started to write.
For some reason, you are alive in this moment.
If your reading this, you are probably in great physical comfort. That the many before you had never experienced.
You woke up today, most likely, in a land of peace.
In a bed fit for royalty, even 200 years ago.
You can get fresh clean water from a tap, take a bath more than once a season, have light at night. And you have food that you didn’t have to hunt for this morning.
You might even have a car and gas that can take you to wherever you want!
Or even money to hop on a plane and fly wherever you want. It’s simply mindblowing when you stop and think about it.
And yet we forget to count our very blessings of living in a land in peace?
Did you have breakfast?
Did you wake up next to someone you love deeply?
Did you have clean water this morning?
Did you fall asleep last night not knowing if you’d have a warm, safe place to sleep tomorrow?
My guess is that most of us have.
Why?
Because we sit here reaping the benefits of our human ancestry and then complain about our wifi.
Those that lived through a personal hell, most of them couldn’t even fathom this level of luxury. The luxury we no longer consider luxury.
For we are spoiled. Safe, healthy and warm, the luxury we inherited.
And we’re still ungrateful and unhappy.
Even many of our humanity family still live in their own personal hell. When paradise is just one realization away. Gratitude through the bullshit. Gratitude through the marketing telling us otherwise. Gratitude for our luxury.
We have so much time on our hands, compared to many today, compared to our ancestors.
We have the space, peace, health and security to live and imagine an incredible future. To live, think, write, change, read, grow.
We have the space to be. And the space to become a humanity of compassion that we have not been able to experience before in history.
Yet, we count what we lack, instead of what we are blessed to have every day at this stage of our existence.
So much to the point that we have forgotten to be grateful for our everyday blessings.
The very basic necessities for our survival that a great many of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers still to this day do not have. And our ancestors certainly didn’t have.
There are great many of our near descendants who gave up their whole lives for the existence of our future. So that we can sit in comfort today. What a flipping blessing it is that I can write on this fine morning!
This message is not meant to shame or judge, we only come from our place of knowing.
We really need to remember how blessed we are to just be like this!
A reminder to sit in gratitude today for the people who came before, our connection through the bridge of time, in thanks.
All I hope for you on this Sunday is that you recognize that you are of the strong, the survivors.
In your genes, in this exact moment, lives resiliency, an unshakable faith, hope and determination. These gifts from our ancestors courses through our viens. Their hope of a future, of relative peace, of a freedom they knew not. The health and safety and comfort that we are living right now, exists in our reality.
Once upon a time, one of your family members, who lived through so much pain, that is nearly impossible for us to even comprehend, had faith that you would live a safe, healthy and happy life.
And here you are.
They made it, so that you could make it.
Please notice how miraculous it is for you to be alive today. Remember for them.
Find something to be grateful for, in one moment today because there really is so much. If you don’t feel like doing it for yourself, then do it for all the human beings that survived and died for you to be sitting here, right now, reading this.
Your life is to be appreciated. They are to be appreciated. You are to be appreciated.
Your life is precious, special and every moment is pure magic. Incredible to even comprehend how amazing it is for you to have and for you to be.
In every moment you can make a difference in your own life, in someone else’s life.
We are the inheritors of the tribes of the survivors. Make your life matter, for yourself, for them, for others in every moment you can remember today.
Be kind. And be in whatever way that brings you peace, gratitude, compassion, acceptance and understanding.
My life will honor the survivors who came before me. I will not take you, or my life for granted.
They survived so that we can thrive.
Make your moments count. Be, in all you are today, in all the moments you can remember. Be in your existence.
And in case you have yet to hear it today, I love you. I am so happy that we exist at the same moment in time. Our human tribe made it. And thanks to them, we’ve made it here together.
Jenny Lane
