Reply to Crying on my lunch break because I’ve realized I’ve seen more of the world than any of my relatives

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m not sure that I should be sad but I’ve just started traveling in my adult years. I’m almost 40 and many of my family members are in their 70s, 80s, 90s now and never had the opportunity or financial means to travel.

I’ve only been to England and every state on the East Coast so far — so nothing terribly exciting but more than any of them have ever been able to.

I think of the family that died like my father and grandmother without ever going to the beach. Simple things I take for granted maybe?

Not sure what type of guilt I’m feeling but I am feeling it today. [/quote]

Are you sure it's guilt OP? Or just melancholy and nostalgia for family members missed? [/quote]

Op here. I feel emotional also when they talk about how segregated things were for them and how life was even at the times when they were my age. We are AA. They were all in the South their entire lives - deep VA and NC. [/quote]

I get it OP. Several of my relatives availed themselves of many opportunities to travel — both internationally and within the US. They grew up in segregated DC — and went from the segregated schools and stores and buses and trains of their youth, to being able to get on a plane and go to China or Kenya or even Russia — freedoms that they could not imagine would be possible even throughout their early years as adults. My grandmother and uncle bought property in an African American  beach community— so that they and their kids and their grandchildren could experience the joys and relative innocence of growing up with a place of relative freedom — instead of the limited recreational opportunities then available in racially segregated DC — which was, itself, far less restrictive then segregated Alabama and Georgia where they were originally from.

For me, my tears actually are holding a lot of rage — that my family, my ancestors worked so hard in a country that didn’t value them and respect them or allow them the freedoms that they should have had access to as human beings.   OP, like many of us, you are living your ancestor’s wildest dreams.  Your joy is a revolution.  I’m sure that they would encourage you to see and experience as much of the world as you can — if only so you can more fully break free from the restrictions that are embedded in your/their/our history and generational consciousness. [/quote]

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