I realized this around mid-May this year. I had to go to the nurse because I was having a headache. She already knew who I was, and started talking to me about my great grandfather, asking me all kinds of questions. I wasn’t in the mood of answering but I did it politely. When I told her I had never gone to visit my great grandfather’s old house, she looked at me and muttered: “How ungrateful…” That really bothered me. I mean, not to sound too ‘snobbish’ but has she ever gone to the house where her great grandfather used to live? I doubt it.
This has made me realize how things people may think would be really cool, really are not. For example, I have a friend who always asking me how cool it is to be the great grandson of a famous historian. It really isn’t good or bad, to me he is just my great grandfather. When I think of him I don’t think how important he was, and what a role model people see him as; even though I know this is true, I just think of him as a family member. Maybe that is what the descendants of other public figures might feel. For example, I used to think: “How cool would it be to be that guy’s son, or grandson, or relative to that matter.” When you are actually ‘that guy’s’ relative, it is a whole new perspective, because to you he stops being ‘that guy’, and he is now just your relative.
There is a saying that says that looks are deceiving. Realities are the same. You don’t know exactly how something is until you experience it yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is awful to have a great-grandfather like mine, or that I suffer when people compare me to him, I am saying that it is not as great as people think it is, and that sometimes, like I said before, I want to be known as myself, not my great-grandfather’s great-grandson.