Inherited Identities

I am down to two weeks from Tuesday until two of the most heckish (this is a family friendly board, so I won't write what I really think) weeks of my academic life begin.  I'm slowly but surely clearing the floor of my room from my comprehensive exam books, putting them into boxes to mail home come mid-November and the Thanksgiving break.  It is both exciting and frightening at the same time.  I can't wait to be done, but as with all tests, am more than a little anxious about the outcome.  Along the way I've learned to love pre-1800s Native Americans, hate the Populist party and the Progressives, and be increasingly admiring of Latin American women.  I'm excited to be finished with things and be able to move onto my dissertation.  And I'm even more excited to be able to spend a few days at home in November.

Dad, Max, Rob

This past week I had one of those experiences that jogged my memory and made me ask questions that I hadn't ever really thought about.  I saw a PBS interview with Steve Young talking about concussions in the NFL.  As I watched it, I was suddenly taken back to when I was a kid.  I was one of the biggest San Francisco 49er fans out there.  I had a sweet 49ers jacket, and my best friend Chris was a 49ers fan too.  I remembered making a Christmas card in 1988 or 1989, a collage of sorts of pictures of 49ers.  It was a dazzling piece of artwork befitting of the most luxurious of recycling bins, but my dad took it and mailed it to Steve Young, who responded generously with a signed picture thanking me for the card.

As I thought back on these things, I realized something that had never occurred to me before.  While I was a 49ers fan, my brother Rob was a Bears fan.  Both teams, aside from being very good at the time, happened to have former BYU quarterbacks on their team:  Steve Young and Jim McMahon.  I started wondering why I had become a 49ers fan, and to be honest I wasn't sure.  And then I started to think about how much my Dad loves BYU football.  I wondered if I was a 49ers fan and Rob was a Bears fan because Dad liked to see how the old BYU players were doing and watched their games.  This made a lot of sense to me.

I was also a big BYU fan.  And while there is also the distinct possibility that I was a BYU football fan in the premortal existence, I also admit that the fact that my Dad was a big fan and watched the games whenever possible, and took us whenever possible, played a big role in my becoming a BYU fan.  He, in turn, had gotten that from my Grandpa Dowdle who had made tremendous sacrifices to attend BYU when he was young.  On the other side of the family, my Papa Haycock was a big BYU fan and kept close track of the scores.  So it seems I was destined to cheer for the Cougars.

These realizations set me to thinking about how many traits we inherit from our parents and grandparents.  It isn't just eye color, hair characteristics, height, etc., it is also hobbies, passions, and loves.  They give us much knowingly, and perhaps even more unknowingly, and those things serve as constant reminders of who we are and where we have come from.

Similarly, we bring much with us from our Heavenly Parents.  Of course we have forgotten much because of the veil, but surely there are some traits that even a veil of forgetfulness cannot obscure.  We spent a long time in Their presence, learned from Them, laughed with Them, wept with Them, and did many other things that we don't remember.  All of that shaped our eternal character.  Anyone who spends time around a new baby knows that they come into this world with pre-developed traits.  Where did they get those?  The simple answer is that they have had them for a long, long time.

While we have our own individual traits and character, so much of who we are is the result of the people who have loved us, taught us, and blessed our lives.  For all those who have blessed and shaped my life and character (and made me a BYU fan), I am extremely grateful!

Brett