Biography
By doing this project I was able to learn a lot about my family history, and it shed some light on my own personality and ambitions. Better understanding my great-grandfather means that I better understand my grandpa. Better understanding my grandpa means I understand my own father better. Through this understanding I have gained I now have a clearer view of myself. Hearing about my great-grandfather’s time in World War II and the horrible times he faced helped explain the distance he had with his family. This distance I believe caused my grandpa to also have an emotional distance from his family. I think my father felt these effects from both past generations and rejected it. My father is very close to his family emotionally. I took after my own father and am also emotionally close to others. It is stories like this that I think make understanding your family very important. I also see other aspects of myself in my family. Like my wish to have adventures. My grandpa left home at the age of fourteen to go be a cowboy in Texas. I can easily understand his reasoning and wish for similar adventures for myself. It is interesting to see these similar qualities in members of your family. You can hear the stories of their lives and see how your own ambitions played out in different settings of place and time. Even though their lives had many obvious differences from your own you may find that history repeats itself and you have more in common with your family than you may want to admit! I hope that my family history prompts some introspection within you about who you are and how this may have come to be.
