It is fine to honor your ancestors, but know that their thinking does not have to be yours. Their thinking may not have been their own. It may have been their ancestors'. Your bodily form is not all you have inherited. You have inherited thought patterns as well as genes.

Thoughts have been handed down to you. Ways of thinking have been instilled in you. Your thoughts about something may not be the same as seeing it for itself. You may see what you have been taught to predict to be there.

Thoughts are often thoughts about thoughts, thought on thought. A reaction is a habit of thought. A natural reaction may not be natural at all. It may have been learned. It almost certainly was learned because, as a child, you reacted to the thoughts of those around you as if they were laws of creation.

Your ancestors could learn a lot from you. What would you tell them if they presented themselves before you? What gifts of knowledge would you give to them? What light would you shed on the magnificence of Human life? That may be the tribute you would give them, for they were a rung on your ladder, but you have stepped beyond their footfall.

It is not a question of the times. It is a question of evolution. You came from your ancestors, but you are your own tree. You might say you are a graft from them, and for that you assign honor, but you are your own shoot now.

If there are no limits on you — and I say there are none — your pictures of your place in life will grow beyond the pictures you inherited. Consider that. Perhaps you have a lot to live up to, or down, but that matters not.

You will have your own portrait painted.

You are the drawer of your own life. No one else can map it out for you. But you can only draw it as you go along. You cannot sketch the future. It will appear itself as if out of a mist.

Looking back you may see the roads that led you where you now are, but you walked innocently. You are a pioneer of your own life. You are the explorer, and you are the discoverer. You are not a settler. Your portrait is not finished.

Your parents may have joined the line of your ancestorship now. Count the many strengths they gave you, and then go on. Depart from their course in life. It was only a starting-off place. It is not your destination. You do not need to feel bad to go beyond their journey. They took you somewhere and dropped you off, and now it is your own journey that you take. You cannot fulfill theirs.

Through your fulfillment of your own life, you honor your parents. They gave you much, and now you will leave much for others who follow you. All others are your children. You set the pace for others. Yes, it is a relay, this process of living life in the world.

What do you relay? What tune do you put on someone else's lips? What suggestions does your life make? What inheritance do you leave? What statement does your life make?

You do not live your life for yourself alone. You do not live it merely for those around you. You also live your life for those who come after. You are readying the world for the next inheritors of earth.

Someone else will move into your haunts. They will take over what you have bequeathed to them. Bequeath.