We Keep Getting it Wrong

an outloud journal entry

I went to bed with this on my mind, and woke up with it still ringing, loudly — we keep getting it wrong. Our steps, our decisions, and the path we take with one another.

Then there is Grandma Woywod. She is definitely with me, I sense her. My Dad definitely knew but his heart hurt so much from it he broke, his..what some call a flaw..was a symptom of his pain. And then there is my Uncle George, he too has been on my mind, I feel his presence. He was in the military, a Major General was his official rank when he retired.

Uncle George was the epitome of what people see in their mind’s eye when they here that respected rank — a tall and sturdy man at 6'6" ish wearing a poker face of confidence. When he would fly back to Chicago from whatever assignment he was on, wherever in the world it was, he’d stop by the house on his way home. We lived nearby O’Hare.

Dad and him would have coffee and talk about current events. There was always something that called my attention to Uncle George. He was guarding something, something his being ached about, but for the greater good and duty, he protected it from getting out — I don’t know what it was, I just know what I sensed and whatever it was, softened his heart to mankind and forgiving the past — bittersweet. Yes, that is the sense I would get, bittersweet.

I’ve been digging into our ancestry roots on both sides of my family. One is rather easy to follow and well documented mainly because Mom’s family colonized this country. They were the slave traders, owners, and indentured servants — judge, accuser, jury, and the accused in some witch hunts here, and from where they came from- the land of Celtic legends.

Dad’s family, all I knew was the strong hold to being Prussian, Old World Prussian. Grandpa spoke about the clans and before becoming Catholic. He wanted me to know those were out roots and where we came from, it was important to him for me to never forget.

Then there’s Grandma, her heart ached for the family she left back in their village of Rosengarth, East Prussia, Germany -between wars and running from one starvation to another. She arrived just before the Great Depression hit but it was WWII that her family would find themselves torn apart by hate and greed.

Force fed disinformation and straight out lies, playing off of their hunger and fears, they fell inline, or just became indifferent to the genocide sleeping hearts created. Then when the bodies started piling up their own was taken and killed in a camp, Stuthoff. His name was Bernard Keuchel, a Catholic German, and his story was lost to time.

Then the powerhold of the hate started waning and a new one was created, all those who survived and were called German, paid the price — they were thrown out of East Prussia as they watched family and friends be slaughtered to bits, Russian troops raping the women and children, torturing them to their last breath — revenge. Revenge because of hate.

Tracing these roots has left me with this eerie feeling all of this has been for a reason, these tragic events my family walked in history, patterns keep cycling. Over and over… hate playing off of ignorant fears , destroying the world, blood spilled over someone’s mind not clicking right…and others follow. Almost like one computer spreading it out to every other one it touches. And we just sit there…waiting…always waiting for the next thing to drop.

It had me wondering did my ancestors have clarity at any point through all of those life murdering events? Did someone say we have to stop this, now? Did they feel small? Did they know they had options? What was their hearts telling them? Could they feel it? Did they sense the ones before them trying to guide them to peace?

Am I the only one noticing this? Are there others out there feeling like this? Are your hearts telling you if we don’t stand up and stop this cycle…all of these cycles from spinning out of control, we are our own doom?

The destruction is all around us, and behind us, but what is in front of us?

Do we have to keep repeating these lessons — our families bleeding out our failures, their pains writing history?

Why am I feeling all of this so deeply? Is the answer in our hearts?

Greed.

It is eating mankind and has been since our inception and we keep allowing it to happen.

Look to your histories, all of them. Feel what is must have been like — the confusion, the pain, the surrealism, the aches, the love felt and lost — the joys.

Do you see it?

We keep getting it wrong.

We have to start healing hearts, but we also must face our flaws, and that greed, firmly and without creating more innocent victims.