I wrote this piece several years ago, stored it in my notes, and as with most of my writing, never shared it with anyone. (I once heard a Richard Rohr lecture¹ about the Enneagram describing this type of behavior as a typical 4w5 tendency and felt slightly called out… been working on balancing those wings…) My Brother (4w3) took part in a beautiful documentary that was just released titled ‘Vaders’² (Fathers). It features an important aspect of our shared Egyptian family history and upbringing. Watching it reminded me of this writing. So, here it is, like an archeological dig from the folds of time, dedicated to our ancestors:
My Frisian Maternal Grandmother was a writer. She observed her surroundings and wrote poems about that which she could not quite accept about the world she lived in. My Mother is, in essence, a language-inspired educator, a theater maker, an avid reader and organizer. They are the critical thinkers. The sense-makers. The women who ensure everything works out, gets arranged, and retrieved, and put in its right place. They have the map and a plan. My left brain is a Woman being practical and fair and resourceful.
My Coptic Egyptian Paternal Grandfather was the keeper of the sweetest heart. It was trudged upon and obscured by the circumstances surrounding him, but his essence carried quietly over to his two Sons. They in their turn struggled with the confusion of having such sweet hearts in such a cruel world. My Uncle died in a car crash in 1994. The pain of losing him remains a perpetual ache on my Father’s face. Yet the pureness of a heart cannot stay hidden forever. In moments when you least expect it, it shimmers through; laughs and cries from a spirit of deeply sourced Truthfulness. They are the dreamers, the philosophers, the idealists. My right brain is a Man in mystical divine rapture.
I carry within me lineages of Dutch pragmatism and Egyptian romanticism in equal symbiosis. Growing up in the Netherlands felt alienating and soulless. Visiting Egypt felt unnecessarily chaotic and maddening. Children of two worlds find themselves at home in neither. Children of two worlds are here to help build a new one.
***
Every descendant is an anchor. An anchor in time and space, hooked into the soil of this very moment, and attached to the floating spirit-ark that carries our ancestral lineages. Those lineages are complex and multifaceted. Just a few jumps into recent history, let’s say 200 years, and we are already talking about a group of 32 embodied souls directly responsible for our lives. Without them we simply would not be here. The odds were remarkably stacked in favor of our existence. And the further back we travel in time, that number of souls grows exponentially and wildly large.
Every descendant is also a natural bridge between the difference of two separate bodies. An intricate marriage of two genetic codes, passed down like an ever expanding puzzle through time. When I stop to feel the weight of that, I suddenly feel very responsible for my own life. Because my own life isn’t just my own life. It’s a culmination of immense labor and love through the ages. When I write, I write for my Grandmother. When I dive into the deepening waters of spiritual expansion, I am grabbing my Grandfather’s hand to take him with me.
We sometimes desperately seek anchors outside of ourselves, outside of our own histories, trying to hold on to external sources for stability. Temporary and flimsy as though they may be. In doing so, we risk dissociating from our own essence and disowning our ancestors. We may begin to feel disconnected, like strangers to ourselves and to this world. As such we block the flow of our own particular life-force. Many indigenous cultures the world over have always prescribed staying connected to our ancestors. That’s for a reason. It’s their trauma and their gifts we get to work with. Acknowledging that paves a path towards our freedom.
When we amplify differences outside of ourselves, between me and you, or us and them, and blame them for our troubles, we reject the complex contradictions already within us. When we deny the paradoxical nature of our own psyches, we block the possibility of integration. Integration leads to liberation. When you can look every part of yourself in the eye, no matter how ugly or uncomfortable, can pour each part a cup of tea, lend it an ear to hear what it needs, you no longer have to expend any energy hiding or pretending to be perfect when you are not. Oh, the relief.
We can only become solid bridges to one another, in intimate relationship, when we have recognized and accepted that we hold every duality already within the confines of our own being. That awful trait that drives me up the wall with frustration in a loved one? Ah, that’s mine too. I do that too. Or; I do the equally annoying extreme opposite to compensate. In that group of 32 souls of recent ancestry, every dark natured violent asshole and every impossibly sweet and generous heart is represented. Without a doubt. Sometimes in the very same person.
Everything I reject in you, hides in me as well.
Everything I revere in you, resides in me as well.
This is how wholly we are. How ingeniously complete. This is how I anchor myself in my own life. How I bridge difference within and around me. We are all in this together, portals of consciousness doing deep inner work alongside one another in this precise and precious moment. That work, it ripples beyond the scope of our understanding: Horizontally through our own generation, and vertically through every past and every future.
And all of our ancestors are watching from the hallways of history, hoping, wishing, dreaming us into being. I can see them, some cheerful, some still hiding in shame. I have conversations with them now. Pour them cups of tea. There’s a resounding call ringing through those hallways of time, much like that last line in one of my favorite Rilke poems³. I stretch my arms open toward the sky, feet anchored to the Earth, my fingers reaching, the call echoes: “Give me your hand.”
¹ That particularly uncomfortable Richard Rohr lecture on the Enneagram 4: Here.
² The trailer of the documentary ‘Vaders’ with Eloi Youssef and Lakshmi Swami Persaud: Here.
³ The Rainer Maria Rilke poem that made me lose my shit and weep the first (and second and third) time I read it: Here.
Yvet Youssef 