Day of the dead and remembering our ancestors
Why we should care about the past at least once a year
Sometimes I think I'm missing past knowledge buried under hundreds of years of neglect. Knowledge that humans have always felt true, but that we ignore in the modern age, or consider primitive.
Indigenous people all over the world believe that our ancestors are still around us. From Peru to Mexico and South Africa to Benin, many still have different practices to honor those who have died. They believe their ancestors continue to inhabit the land they have always lived on and help their descendants.
In that way, death is a passage, another step. One where the one that passes away will still be next to their family and will still be available to them whenever they need.
No one is "lost", they are still around. All the reverence, offers, and dances one once performed in homage to their ancestors will eventually be offered to them. In that way, death is not an abrupt end; it is one more step.
It makes sense to think this way. We are all part of this big universe; the matter and molecules that make us are the same as those that constitute all other things. Once our bodies decay, we will be part of the earth and other living beings. We are also part of a long chain of people before us, all living in our DNA.
I hate Orson Weller's phrase “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone". I don't think that can be any further from the truth. We are always surrounded by people, even if they don't directly share our DNA.
Just look around you. The desk you are at was touched by so many people and was once a living thing growing on a mountainside somewhere. Someone cut the wood, another transported it, others made the screws, and someone else the desk. Maybe there was a different designer as well. And that's just your desk.
Today you will be in contact with many people's works and lives. Even if you are completely alone at home, you will eat an fruit that someone picked up. You will scroll through a phone assembled by someone in China whose life you will never know.
We are extremely connected to the living and to people who have already gone. Whose lives and experiences we will never grasp, but in some way allow our lives to be exactly the way they are.
Although Halloween has become a commercial holiday to sell plastic decorations we don't need, it came from a day to honor the dead. To honor our ancestors, something we may have lost along the way. Something present in most, if not all, human cultures at some point.
This interest and reverence to our ancestors has been lost.
We barely talk to our parents, or at least with any curiosity. With grandparents, it is even worse. We take it for granted when they are alive, and we never really get to know who they are outside of the idea we have of them1.
We seem so lost in ourselves, our goals and endeavours that sometimes we forget to look back or even sideways. In all the ways, everything we are comes from so many small decisions someone made in the past. For instance, I would never exist if my great-grandparents hadn't decided to embark on a boat to an unfamiliar land.
In a larger sense, so much of what we are is them, our ancestors. This is true no matter if they are still around on another plane, helping us out or not.
Maybe you honored them this week, or maybe you didn't. Just take some time to appreciate how unlikely it is that you are here right now. Also, appreciate how magical it is that part of you comes from someone who lived in another place at another time. With their desires and fears, love and hate, joy and sadness.
And how connected we all are in general, to the living, the dead, and everything around us. It both humbles you and encourages you to care more about each and every living being you encounter.
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Clara del Valle has unique abilities but goes mute for nine years after her sister's death. She breaks the silence to announce her engagement to Esteban Trueba, a stern landowner.
The House of Spirits is a semi-autobiographical book portraying Isabel Allende's family history through generations in an unnamed country, but with a clear resemblance to the Chile she grew up in. Filled with magical realism, it's a modern classic and worth reading.
Practical Magic (1998)
Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) share a special bond and were raised by their aunts in a small town. However, they face prejudice from the townspeople due to their witchcraft abilities and a family curse that prevents them from finding love.
A favorite for Halloween, this movie is also an excellent pick for the topic of how our ancestors may have a direct effect on our lives. Plus, it is the movie where Nicole Kidman is the prettiest she has ever been.
Bloodline (Netflix)
Bloodline is a family drama that follows the story of the Rayburn family. The plot begins when the oldest son, Danny Rayburn, returns home after being away for many years. Danny's return brings to the surface a lot of secrets and scars from the family's past. Although Danny wants to stay and help out with the family inn, his siblings are against it. As the first season unfolds, we learn why the family's relationships are so complicated. Bloodline explores the idea that sometimes it's difficult to break free from who you are and where you come from.
P.S.: I have created an Instagram account to share the collages I have been doing and some writing as well. If you are interested in that, click here.
To be fair, sometimes we don't have the maturity to understand how meaningful our grandparents are until much after they have passed.