Article written by: Vítor Mota
Each person is a living synthesis of many stories.
Before we were born, we already carried within us inherited gestures, beliefs, and ways of loving and fearing, passed down through generations.
Ancestry is not just a succession of names in a family tree; it is an invisible thread that weaves our way of feeling, thinking, and being in the world.
We carry genetic legacy in the body; in the mind, the values and fears of those who preceded us; in the soul, the emotional energy of everything that has been experienced, victories, silences, losses, and hopes.
This heritage shapes what we believe is possible and what we judge to be our "way of being”. We often confuse what we have acquired by "contagion" with what has been transmitted to us by dowry.
To become aware of this ancestry is to recognize that we are more than isolated individuals: we are a living pivot of a human current, which precedes us and which, by our presence, also transforms.
Our biology and our family history are the terrain where personality germinates, but not destiny.
We inherit predispositions, yes, physical, emotional, and cultural, but the way we live them depends on the awareness we bring to the present.
We can repeat old patterns, perpetuating fears, limiting beliefs, or modes of relationship based on control, neediness, distrust, or hope; or we can look at this heritage with respect and curiosity, asking: "How does this history live in me?" and "What in me is repetition and what is creation?".
At this point, freedom is born.
Consciousness transforms inheritance into choice. We are no longer just a "result", and we become authors of our own narrative.
To be authentic is not to reject the past, but to be reconciled with it.
Authenticity emerges when we integrate the voices of our history, the brightest and the darkest, and find our own form of expression.
We often confuse authenticity with spontaneity, but being authentic is something deeper; It is the coherence between what we are, what we feel, and what we manifest in our actions and relationships. To be authentic is to honor the roots, without letting them determine the fruit.
When we recognize the marks of ancestry, the values, the fears, the invisible loyalties, we can consciously choose which part of that heritage we want to continue to present and what part we want to transform. Thus, we free ourselves from unconsciously repeating history and begin to co-create new possibilities for relationships and life.
Living authentically is an act of courage and gratitude.
Courage, because it implies looking at what we have received in the face, without denying or idealizing. Gratitude, because it recognizes that even the inherited pains were attempts at love, imperfect perhaps, but human.
When we understand ancestry in this way, it ceases to be a burden and becomes a source of meaning.
Each conscious gesture is a new link that rewrites the chain of who we are.
Each relationship lived with presence is a step in the evolution of our lineage.
Authenticity is not breaking with the past; it is transforming it into lived wisdom.
… In doing so, we become bridges between what was and what can be, between the voices of those who came before and the fertile silence where the new is born.
In relationships, each encounter is the meeting of several stories.
The bonds we establish - affective, family, professional - are mirrors that reveal what we still need to understand about ourselves and the heritage we carry.
Sometimes we love as we have been loved; other times, we run away from loving in the way that hurt us. We repeat gestures and words that belong to other times, but that still live in us. Recognizing this is not guilt, it is opportunity.
Each relationship is a field of healing and awareness, where we can transform what we have inherited into enlightenment. When we look at the other without projecting only the old stories, we begin to see the human being in front of us with more truth. In this authentic encounter, we also free ourselves, because the other is no longer the mirror of the past, but the partner of our present.
Recognizing ancestry is understanding that we do not start from scratch. To live authentically is to accept that the starting point does not define the destination.
Between what we inherit and what we choose, there is a sacred space, the room of consciousness. It is there that the person finds himself, and it is from there that the true relationship with the other springs: free, mature, and human.
Being authentic is the deepest gesture of love we can offer to those who came before and the best legacy to those who will come after.
