Ancient History

Another new year, and it is already the end of the fourth week of 2012!   Whenever a new year begins, I always have this overwhelming urge to excavate.  Layer by layer, I dig up one life relic after another from the previous year.  I love every part of the digging process.  I love deep digging with a shovel, and I love scraping the surface with a spoon.  I peruse my day planner (date book), journal and family calendar to make sure that I have not overlooked a rare find for the Tomorrow Trunk.

I began this process years ago when I first read Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach.  I use the words “first read” because I have read the book or parts of the book a hundred times.  I began underlining my favorite quotes and passages and finally just decided to underline the entire book.  One particular passage explains the excavation  process, in which Breathnach “employ(s) the three levels of study – observation, description, explanation – that Bill McMillon describes in his Archaeology Handbook.” I use the same process to record the activities, accomplishments, mistakes and missteps of the year that has passed...and hopefully, unearth a '"small thing forgotten."

This past Sunday, I attended a special ordination service for my husband’s brother-in-law.  At the service, I saw a longtime friend who is also the mother of one of my daughter’s first boyfriends.  With so much history between us, I wasn’t sure how awkward the chance meeting would be.  Even though we were best friends at one time, I had witnessed a season of strain take its toll on the naturalness of our friendship.  As we greeted each other, I realized - almost immediately - that too many layers of life had formed and crusted-over that friendship.  We were gracious to each other with both of us trying our best to be genuine. When I told my daughter about the encounter, she replied, “Well, Mom, that is just ancient history.”

It is so ironic that archaeology is derived from the Greek word arkhaiologia, which is translated as “the study of the ancient.”  Every new layer of my life requires the burial of another.  That is what makes excavating so amazing!  I can literally experience the extinction of a former me in a particular phase of my life and the rebirth of someone new as I enter a more evolved passage!  I have made statements like, “Thank God, that person doesn’t exist anymore,” or “I don’t even know who that person was.”  AND IT’S TRUE! 

Like most successful civilizations, my family's ability to evolve has been born out of difficult challenges and great struggles...which led to a necessary re-positioning and an ultimate conversion.  The excavation of my family's story has followed a migratory path of survival and success!  We rise, we fall, we move, we change and we rise again.  Through this adaptation process, we are constantly repairing, mending, improving, regulating, shaping and fine tuning each layer.  As we are reborn, we follow clearer paths and find more authentic versions of ourselves. Without this process, we live out our entire lives on a few surface layers; we have no depth to the study of our lives.

I also learned a lesson about the word authentic as I studied the principles of excavation.  According to thesaurus.com, genuine means not fake or counterfeit; however, authentic means conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief and trust.  We discover our authentic selves when we lay claim to the events of our lives - those indisputable facts to which we must conform - and reveal them as worthy of belief and trust.  "You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.  When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality." ~~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Breathnach writes that expedition parties search for "the small things forgotten" according to archaeologist James Deetz.  I always desire to lift the lid of the Tomorrow Trunk and find the small things forgotten ~ today's big story tucked away.  With two of my children graduating from college this year, I am sure 2012 will bring new beginnings, new migrations and new challenges.  Our family's story will become deeper as new layers are added and old layers are buried away.  As time goes by, today's fresh memories of 2011 will seem like, well, ancient history. 

Dianne ; )