Family matters?

By Chris Trout | January 11, 2009

Does family history matter?

If you've worked with youth - or lived your own life - for any time at all, you know the answer to this question: Of course! People who grow up with supportive, loving, stable families tend to have an easier road than the rest of us. You can see it in their eyes. You can hear it in their words. You can feel it in your bones: They feel solid and sure, and they see life as possible.

The question is: Is this information useful? Well, I certainly want to pay attention to how these lucky SOB's see the world. I want to know how it feels to be in their skin. I want to know what made them that way.
 
And… I can't make my own or anyone else's family history any different than it was. It's past, gone, water under the bridge (even if I'm still living in it). No control, no fixing, no "do-overs."
 
But isn't there great benefit to understanding your history? Well… some insights bring relief, yet there always seems to be another (and another and another) layer to the onion. We can spend a lifetime peeling back these layers and, in the meantime, forget to live our own lives. Our story becomes their story. Our eyes are always looking backward. And the box we live in remains very small.
 
So what happens if we acknowledge that what was (or is), simply is - then, with a shrug of the shoulders, turn our attention to the future and focus on what we want, not what we don't want. I have some ideas about how this might (and does) work but, instead of sharing them here, I'd like to open the discussion. 

What do you think? What is your experience?