Hello World: I, Am-algam
I, Am-algam.
Amalgam. A “mixture of different elements.” Life offers a multitude of different subjects, from science, history, math, and so on. You can break these things down to chemistry, heritage, culture, and time. All of these elements create who we are in this exact moment. My exact moment is made up of 4 different cultures that derive from Croatia, Germany, Britain, and the Philippines. I am that amalgam. The chemistry that it takes for those heritages to come together in this moment has been cultivated by time. Everything is interrelated. From this, we are individuals who “contribute” our own “verse” to the “powerful play” that “goes on” (Walt Whitman).
There is a reason by which history repeats, why we all as human beings ask ourselves the same questions. We all come from different makeups but we all have these questions .There is a reason why equations and/or specific mixtures in science work time and time again.
We all are trying to find our identities. This is why companies like 23&Me, Ancestry, and Helix have come to be so popular. Ancestry grounds us. DNA tells us what and why. It is an opportunity for people to discover themselves, heritage, and even health. Divulging into how safe this database is… is another topic to discuss. But again, this is a mixture of heritage and chemistry.
You go to a party, and people always ask, “Where are you from?” It is up to the individual to explore, discover, and present themselves as what they want to be perceived as.
Historically, where you were from mattered to politics and power. When royals chose who was going to carry on their legacy, country, and crest, it mattered when people were from. For instance, in Britain, lineage and connection to a throne gave prestigious elevation in society. That elevation in society, however, was a matter of survival. Today, we are in the midst of a change which “where are you from” can come from a point of curiosity or negativity. People can use “where are you from” to discriminate, but power, knowledge, and respect comes from how can one weave seemingly different cultural or racial backgrounds into something grand. Matter is neither created nor destroyed.
The recent World Cup was the physical representation of heritage and “Which flag are you going to fly?” The further teams got along, the more nationalist (not in the crazy way, but a more cultural belonging way to place one’s own identity) one felt. My own house flew Croatian and German flags, regalia, shirts, you name, it all over. The unfortunate question, when France won, came down to if the black players were really French. These men have French blood and identify with France as their homeland, even though their other ancestry comes from a different country, let alone continent.
A question to think about, though, is why we as society allow borders to define who we accept. These borders are not to be discounted, for political, economic, and safety reasons, but our ever growing and ever evolving society as a whole should come to learn/teach ourselves how to be more accepting.
This blog will be about what creates us and what will we be from that.
