Lately, I’m on a genealogy kick trying to suss out who I’m related to and how. It’s endlessly fascinating because it’s a puzzle but also a web. As you know, there are many offshoots of a family tree — aunts, uncles, cousins — who all have their own direct family lines. But what’s even more interesting is that we’re all related, literally.
If you go back far enough, you reach a date when family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common, which is called the genetic isopoint. In other words, the family trees of any two people on the earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals. Geneticist Adam Rutherford told Scientific American, “If you were alive at the genetic isopoint, then you are the ancestor of either everyone alive today or no one alive today.” The genetic isopoint occurred somewhere between 5300 and 2200 B.C., according to statistical calculations.
“In relation to race, it absolutely, categorically demolishes the idea of lineage purity,” Rutherford added. That’s because no person has forebears from just one ethnic background or region of the world. Instead, we are all related. The poet Satyendra Dutta expresses this beautifully when he says, “There is only one race in the entire world, and the name of that race is the human race. We are bound together with the same breast milk of Mother Earth, and the same sun and moon are our common companions.”
Exactly! The same sun, moon, and stars are our common companions and we are all living on the same planet Earth. Yet somehow we forget that. We get caught up in dividing ourselves into this group or that. We say, “I’m not like you,” but is that really true? Don’t we all have the same feelings and needs? Aren’t we more alike than we are different? What do we get by focusing on differences, anyway?
My spiritual teacher said, “The opportunists tried in the past, are trying at present, and will try even in the future to fulfill their narrow desires by keeping the human race disunited. By severely reproaching this opportunistic craftiness through your noble deeds, you draw nigh the unknown strangers living far away and build a healthy world-based human family. Ignoring the brute forces, the sky-kissing arrogance, hypocrisy, immorality, and glib outbursts of the conceited people, go ahead towards your cherished goal.”
The cherished goal isn’t to become a billionaire, by the way. As you likely guessed, it’s to feel the sweet union between yourself and something greater than yourself. This is a quote from my spiritual teacher, after all.
Learning about genealogy reminds me we’re a universal family, quite literally. We are like a garden filled with numerous flowers, but ultimately all a part of the same garden. Like flowers, on the surface, we have different petals, different leaves. Some of us require more water and some of us require less, but we are all flowers. In other words, we’re all humans a part of the same race.
I dream of a world where we treat each other like family. A world where we extend care and appreciation to strangers because we recognize, they, too, are our siblings. A world where we understand there’s only one race, the human race. A world where we embrace the idea of a literal universal family.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
In December, a friend of mine posted this fascinating article about how everyone on Earth is actually your cousin. As if to hammer the point home, while watching People will Talk with Cary Grant, my dad announced Jeanne Crain is my cousin. What? You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Of course I think it’s cool that I’m related to a famous actress, but what I find even more interesting is the idea that I am literally related to everyone on Earth. Think about it: Even if we’ve never met before, we are related, we are family. What makes me laugh is that my spiritual teacher emphasizes this point over and over: that we are a universal family, that we are all brothers and sisters, and now I’ve stumbled across an article that gives credence to that idea.
We are all brothers and sisters.
What would the world look like if we behaved as if we were one big family? I can’t help but think we would treat other a little better. That there wouldn’t be an anti-immigration stance popping up in politics. That homelessness would be a thing of the past. That there wouldn’t be so much income inequality. But mostly, that we would show true caring for one another.
This is not a pipe dream, by the way. It may feel like that right now, but I know it’s not completely out of the realm of reality. I know this because I interact with people every day who hold the view point that we are all brothers and sisters. I see people taking a stance against racism, people who are outraged about police brutality, people who want to help unaccompanied minors fleeing their native lands in search of a better life. We are more compassionate, we are more loving. Life is not nearly as brutal as it used to be.
Instead of seeing the person down the street as “other,” I see more and more evidence we view that person as family. Let’s keep up this trend. Let’s keep opening our hearts, expanding our radius of love, and treating each other as if we were related, because it turns out, we are.
I dream of a world where we treat each other as family. A world where we extend care and appreciation to strangers because we recognize, they, too, are our brothers and sisters. A world where we keep taking action to manifest a world we wish to see.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.