That Past and Present That Shape Our Future

Imagine a world where curiosity is stronger than judgment, and every new encounter becomes a window not just to another person's story, but our own as well. Hello and thank you for listening to the Element is Everything podcast. I'm Terry Novicek, and I am inspired by this time of year when so many cultural traditions come into play to reflect on how where we come from helps us discover who we are becoming. So I'm going to start with a confession. I grew up believing I was mostly Swedish, with some Irish and Native American ancestry mixed in. It made perfect sense to me. I had what I considered the Swedish look, the Irish temper, and despite my fair skin, I could tan without instantly turning into a lobster. That's what my mother told me, so naturally I accepted it as fact. In fact, years ago, one of our school's students nicknamed me the Viking Lady, and honestly, like what greater evidence could there be that I was Scandinavian? Then along came DNA testing, and wouldn't you know it? No Native American ancestry, very little Scandinavian. Turns out I'm predominantly English. English! After years of confidently attending Viking festivals. So now I'm trying to embrace my British roots. I'm drinking more tea, but I haven't quite yet developed an appreciation for dreary weather. The funny thing is that when I received those DNA results, I realized something important. The story I'd been telling myself about who I was wasn't really about percentages on a genetics report. It was about identity. And that's something every human has always been searching for. We take personality assessments, we read horoscopes, we explore ancestry websites, we compare ourselves to cultural stereotypes. Whether we're looking at the stars, our family tree, or the results of a personality survey, we're all trying to answer that same question. Who am I? Now, some of these identity tools are more scientific than others, but they all point to a universal human desire to understand ourselves. We want to know our strengths, we want to know what motivates us, we want to know where we fit. The challenge is not letting any single label define us. Instead, we can use these different sources of information as lenses to better understand ourselves. And among those lenses, heritage and culture can be especially powerful because they connect us to stories that began long before we came to this planet. When we understand where we come from, we gain another clue about who we might be. Let's begin with a distinction that often gets overlooked. How do heritage and culture differ? Being a plant person, the analogy that comes to me is that heritage is like the roots and culture is the fruit. So like heritage, the roots are hidden beneath the surface. They draw nourishment from the past. They provide stability and strength and identity. Like culture, the fruit is what everyone can see. It's the values, the beliefs, the traditions, the language, the behaviors that show up in everyday life. Heritage connects us to our ancestors. Culture connects us to the larger human community around us. Neither one exists in isolation. Together, they provide stories and values and perspectives and ways of belonging that can help us discover our unique contribution to the world. So why are so many people fascinated by ancestry? Why are family history websites so popular? Why do people spend hours researching old records and interviewing relatives? Because we instinctively understand that our stories matter. Researchers Robin Fivish and Marshall Duke spent years studying family narratives and identity development. Their work found that young people who know more about their family history often demonstrate greater emotional well-being, as well as stronger identity development and a higher resilience. In one study, they developed something they called the Do You Know Scale, which I've included in the show notes for this episode. It asks children questions like, Do you know how your parents met? Do you know where your mother grew up? Do you know how your grandparents earned a living? What they discovered was fascinating. The children who knew more about their family stories often handled adversity better than those who knew very little about their family history. And why would that be? Well, because they saw themselves as part of something larger than themselves. They understood that challenges were not unique to them. Someone in their family had struggled before, someone had survived hardship, someone had failed and recovered, someone had faced uncertainty and kept going. And that understanding created resilience. In other words, knowing your story helps you write your future story. Take Jose Hernandez, for example. He grew up helping his parents work in the fields as migrant workers. On paper, becoming an astronaut probably didn't look like a realistic goal. But Jose often speaks about the sacrifices, the work ethic, the perseverance, and the values he learned from his family. His heritage didn't define his limits. It helped him define his purpose. The goal of exploring heritage is not to discover what you're destined to become, it's to discover the strengths and lessons you've inherited. For me, the search became a little more personal. I didn't know who my biological father was until I was forty years old. When I finally learned it was someone I had known all my life, something surprising happened. I wasn't angry. People often ask if I felt deceived, and I didn't. Instead I was fascinated. Suddenly I had a whole new branch of my story to explore. The questions just started pouring out. What was his heritage? Oh, okay, yep, that explains my English heritage. What traits might I have like him? What interests do we share? And now I know where I got my nose. That curiosity has never gone away. Even now in my 60s, with both parents having passed, I find myself noticing habits, beliefs, and personality traits and wondering where they originated. I had an aunt, not by blood but by marriage, who was extremely neat and organized. Now my mom was by no means disorganized or messy, but I was really drawn to Aunt Carla's style. And I believe she is the reason my spice rack is in alphabetical order with all the labels facing front. Researchers who study intergenerational resilience suggest that families pass down more than traditions and recipes. They also pass down narratives about overcoming adversity. The stories we hear shape the stories we tell ourselves. If you grow up hearing about relatives who survived hardships, adapted to change, persevered through challenges, you begin to view resilience as part of your own identity. You start believing that if they could overcome obstacles, maybe you can too. And sometimes resilience is inherited through the narrative, not genetics, but the stories. Now at this point you might be thinking, okay, well that's great if my family history is inspiring, but what if it isn't? And that's a fair question. What if the family story includes addiction, abandonment, violence, criminal behavior, pain? Even then there is value in knowing the story. The goal isn't to glorify harmful behavior. The goal is to understand it honestly. Sometimes the hero in a family story isn't the person who achieved fame or wealth. Sometimes the hero is the person who broke a cycle, the grandmother who chose sobriety, the father who became the first stable parent, the aunt who returned to school, that ancestor who simply persisted. There is even the ancestor who we say, I don't want to be like that. Understanding both the wounds and the resilience within our family history helps us decide what we want to carry forward and what we want to leave behind. Heritage is not destiny, it is just information. And information can become wisdom with the right mindset. So moving on to culture. We all know humans are wired for belonging. Research consistently shows that people thrive when they can both honor their heritage and participate meaningfully in the culture around them. For example, studies involving transracial adoptees suggest that children raised by loving families of a different race generally do very well. However, the strongest outcomes are often associated with opportunities to learn about and connect with their heritage rather than ignoring it. Similarly, research involving immigrants and multicultural individuals suggests that people tend to flourish when they integrate multiple identities rather than feeling forced to choose one over the other. In other words, belonging is not about choosing between cultures. It's about learning to hold multiple parts of yourself together. And this leads to something I find incredibly important. Learning about other cultures doesn't just help us understand others. It changes us. One of the most consistent findings in the research is that exposure to different cultures increases perspective taking. We become better at seeing the world through someone else's eyes. When we learn why a Muslim fasts during Ramadan, why a Native American community honors certain traditions, or why another culture approaches education or conflict differently, we discover something important. Behavior usually has a story behind it, and the more stories we understand, the less likely we are to judge. The more curious we become, and curiosity becomes the beginning of empathy. Psychologist Gordon Alport introduced what became known as the contact hypothesis. This was all the way back in the 1950s. And the basic idea was that when people come from different groups and work toward common goals, prejudice tends to decrease and understanding tends to increase. Kind of a no duh, right? I mean anyone who has built a friendship across cultures knows this intuitively, but fear can sometimes get in the way. Interestingly, that fear often comes from two different places. Sometimes it comes from what we think we know. We inherit stereotypes, assumptions, or stories about a group of people, and then we begin to believe them before we've had any real experience ourselves. And then other times fear comes from what we don't know. Human beings naturally feel uncertain around the unfamiliar, and it's easy to fill gaps in our understanding with worst case scenarios. The beauty of meaningful contact is that it challenges both kinds of fears. It tests the assumptions we thought were true, and it replaces the unknown with firsthand experience. It's difficult to maintain a stereotype about an entire group once you've built a genuine relationship with a real person. People become individuals. Real stories replace assumptions. What we thought we knew is now been tested. What we didn't know begins to unfold. And in that space, fear often gives way to understanding, empathy, and a much more nuanced view of the world. Something else fascinating happens when we encounter different cultures. We begin to see our own culture more clearly. Have you ever traveled somewhere unfamiliar and suddenly noticed things about your own community that you've never noticed before? And it may not even have to be travel far away. It could just be getting to know a different family. But you might notice a different way they communicate with each other, how they view time, how they raise their children, how they celebrate, how they eat their meals, how they handle conflict. Exposure to different perspectives often helps us better understand ourselves. Sometimes we don't notice our own water until we meet a different fish. There's another benefit as well, creativity. Researchers have found that multicultural experiences are linked to greater creativity and innovation. Why? Well, because exposure to multiple ways of thinking expands our toolbox. A child who learns that one culture values direct debate and another values harmony gains access to both approaches. So rather than having one strategy, they now have many. Instead of seeing one possible solution, they can see several. Innovation oftly emerges where different ideas meet. For example, Maya Lin, the desire of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her work reflects influences from multiple cultural traditions and created something that felt both deeply personal as well as universally meaningful. She reminds us that some of our greatest innovations happen at the intersection of cultures. And then there's me, the former Viking lady. I still wonder sometimes how much of my identity was shaped by the stories I believed about myself. Did I identify with Scandinavian stereotypes because they were true? Or because I thought they were true? If I had grown up knowing I was predominantly English, would I have become more reserved, maybe more polite? Probably not. But the question itself reveals something interesting. The stories we tell ourselves matter, not because they determine who we become, but because they influence how we understand ourselves. We have the power to choose the best and just learn from the rest. And so your challenge for this episode. Set aside some quiet time and ask yourself these four questions, and consider even writing or drawing what comes to mind. What strengths do I want to pull from my heritage? What strengths do I want to pull from my current culture? How do I or can I incorporate those strengths in my daily life? How can those strengths contribute to others? Then find someone from an older generation, maybe in your family or your cultural community, and ask questions that help you draw out from them what challenge shaped them most? What are they most proud of? What do they wish people understood about them? And then ask yourself, which part of their story would you like to become part of your story? Every conversation with someone from a different generation, a different background, or different culture leaves us a little wiser, a little more compassionate, and a little more aware of the many ways there are to be human. While your heritage tells you where you've come from and your culture shapes how you experience the world today, neither has to determine your future. But both can offer clues to the gifts, the values, and the passions that help you discover your element. If so, please take a moment to leave a positive review on the podcast platform you use and share the episode on social media. If you visit the Element is Everything website, you'll find additional resources on today's topic. Invite friends and family to join our community of listeners as we ponder science, perspectives, and strategies around personal accountability, courageous learning, and clear decision making for a sense of connection to ourselves, others, and life.