Your Rich Ancestry (#family, #heritage, #wealth, #inheritance)

To my Little Lion,

We’ve been reading up on the RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) philosophy of Magda Gerber in more depth since you were born. We were already familiar with the basic principles from observing practicing friends, reading the introductory literature and hosting a RIE-class at our home before you were born. But now we’re eagerly doubling down to make sure we really understand it. The information is digested quite differently when a child like you isn’t a theoretical possibility but a living, breathing actuality. We want to try to get it right.

One of the things Magda Gerber stresses is that the most important thing we as your parents have to teach you is who we are as people. Everything we do and say in front of you you will be paying attention to and learning from. You’ll be internalizing ideas about what is normal, what is desirable, what is ideal or typical for parents, for adults, for people who are more powerful than you in various ways, etc. You’ll also be looking at us as examples of how to relate to oneself, and to others — is it with compassion, empathy, respect and benevolence? Or is it a pattern of vindictiveness, aggressive assertiveness, leverage and manipulation?

We feel relieved that this is really all we need to teach you, although it’s an epic task by itself! It makes sense to us also that this is really all we CAN teach you. If it was a parent’s job to teach their child everything they needed to know, every parent would be bound to fail from the get go. No parents are omniscient because no people are, and parents vary in their ability to communicate and educate about key ideas. But teaching who we are is something any parent can do and will do, as it happens normally in the course of living one’s life. We’re going to be mindful of this reality as we learn more about you, and you learn more about us.

One thing may give you pause, though — we will know almost everything about you, because we will have known you since the moment you were born. But we have lived for several decades before you arrived, and even if we do not mean or want to keep secrets, we can not possibly recount every detail of our lives as they existed prior to your arrival. We will try to share with you what we think is important and worth knowing, but you should understand that there is some bias inherent in this selection and try as we might, we may not always be objective in the telling of the facts. As always, it will be up to you to ask questions and make up your own mind. We hope we can be faithful partners in that process.

Now, there are other things that we can teach you and that we want to teach you, especially things we feel especially well-suited to provide guidance and our individual experience about. Your mother, the Wolf, is a talented home cook despite a lack of professional training, and she is eager to share her skill and passion with you if you’re interested. Your father is a bibliophile and has many books and stories to share with you, and years of methodology on how to extract the most juice from the pulp. These are just a few examples, there are many others.

Aside from teaching you about ourselves and modeling what it is we can model for you, you have a wealth of other family members and family friends who can enrich your life with other skills and wisdom as well.

Your Auntie Lionesses are students of film and photography, business and marketing, athleticism and foreign languages. One has picked up the guitar, which your father has never managed to learn but which he just might if you wanted to give it a go together. They can model great compassion and kindness for you.

Your Grandpa Lion is a mechanical person. He didn’t manage to impart many of these skills to your father, but he can probably be convinced to make good on that missed opportunity by teaching you how to use simple tools and DIY around the house, how to work on cars and motorcycles and other things with engines and transmissions. He’s also an outstanding businessman and leader. He knows how to rally excellent people to a cause he believes in and drive the effort forward to a successful conclusion, a timeless social skill you will benefit from immensely if you can learn it from him. Your Grandma Lion is extremely artistic and creative, with a strong eye for design. She can teach you about how to create a warm, decorated home environment, how to develop style in your clothing. Your Grandma Wolf can teach you about what it is like to grow up in another country, and the experience of leaving home behind to start over in some place unfamiliar. She can model what it means to work hard, which means getting on with life and its challenges and doing it with a smile. She can help you grow up to be bilingual so you’ll have an immediate advantage in your future travels, business opportunities and relationships.

Your mother and father have so may close personal friends with endless things you can learn about from them. One is a pioneer with his family, literally hacking a living out of a remote jungle location far from us. Another is learned in the ways of artisanal butchery and can teach you all about the cultivation and processing of nutritious animal proteins. We have friends who have had corporate careers, and those who are entrepreneurs. We know people who are incredible professional investors and people who are thrifty amateurs. We know people who know all about how to have a good time and others who know about being serious and keeping one’s head down. If you desire a balanced life, you’ll want to consider all these examples and choose what makes the most sense to you.

You have great grandparents and practically innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides of your family. Your life is so abundant and rich in so many ways, the biggest challenge you will have will most likely be taking advantage of it all — you won’t have enough time or interest, so you’ll need to learn to be selective.

When people think of education, they primarily think of books and schools. There will be some of that in your learning process, no doubt, but where you can learn the most is by interacting with other capable people. Just like us, they can model who they are and what they know and love and in so doing offer you a wealth of ideas on how to get the most out of your life.

All of this you get just for showing up in life!