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The Courage To Keep Seeking · Living & Learning with Aundria McMillan Humphrey

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Living & Learning with Aundria McMillan Humphrey.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: This is episode 40, The Courage to Keep Seeking.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Last night, I sat in a circle of women.
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SPEAKER_00: We had gathered for a ceremony,
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SPEAKER_00: but as I looked around the room,
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SPEAKER_00: I found myself becoming curious about something beyond the ceremony itself.
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SPEAKER_00: There were women of different generations,
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SPEAKER_00: some were older,
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SPEAKER_00: vibrant,
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SPEAKER_00: accomplished women who had already lived rich and interesting lives,
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SPEAKER_00: and yet there they were, still seeking.
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SPEAKER_00: Seeking knowledge,
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SPEAKER_00: new perspectives, a deeper understanding of themselves, their lineage, their roots.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: And a young woman was leading us.
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SPEAKER_00: I found that particularly beautiful.
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SPEAKER_00: Because here we are,
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SPEAKER_00: women at different stages of life,
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SPEAKER_00: gathered not because we had run out of things to do,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: but because we had not run out of things to discover.
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SPEAKER_00: And I began wondering, what exactly are we seeking?
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SPEAKER_00: Is it understanding, belonging, an explanation for why we are the way we are?
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SPEAKER_00: Perhaps we're hoping to find something missing, a missing piece of ourselves.
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SPEAKER_00: But what happens if we never find it?
1:37
SPEAKER_00: What happens if we never fully understand how we came to be who we are?
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Can we live comfortably with that uncertainty?
1:48
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about the stories we inherit,
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SPEAKER_00: family stories, cultural stories, stories about where we came from.
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SPEAKER_00: What our ancestors endured, what they believed, what they hoped for.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Some of those stories are carefully preserved,
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SPEAKER_00: others are fragmented, forgotten, or deliberately erased.
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SPEAKER_00: Whole populations have been separated from their histories,
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SPEAKER_00: and history itself is not always an innocent record of what happened.
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SPEAKER_00: Too often it has been shaped by those with the power to decide
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SPEAKER_00: whose stories would be told and whose would disappear.
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SPEAKER_00: So when we go searching for our roots,
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SPEAKER_00: we may discover that some of the answers simply aren't available.
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SPEAKER_00: And that raises another question.
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SPEAKER_00: How much must we know about our past?
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SPEAKER_00: To live meaningfully in the present.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: I believe our origins matter.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Understanding what came before us can deepen our compassion,
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SPEAKER_00: broaden our perspectives, and help us recognize patterns we might otherwise repeat.
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SPEAKER_00: But I also wonder whether we sometimes give
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SPEAKER_00: the unanswered questions too much authority over the lives we're living right now.
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SPEAKER_00: Suppose we discover something extraordinary about an ancestor.
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SPEAKER_00: What then?
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SPEAKER_00: So what?
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SPEAKER_00: Does that knowledge make us kinder,
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SPEAKER_00: more courageous,
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SPEAKER_00: more willing to understand someone whose experience differs from our own?
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SPEAKER_00: Does it change how we treat the people we love or the strangers we encounter?
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And suppose we discover nothing at all.
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SPEAKER_00: Are we any less capable of creating lives of meaning and purpose?
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SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the value of seeking isn't always in what we find.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's in what the search awakens within us.
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SPEAKER_00: Curiosity,
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SPEAKER_00: humility,
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SPEAKER_00: compassion,
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SPEAKER_00: the willingness to question what we thought we knew,
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SPEAKER_00: And perhaps an even greater willingness to recognize,
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SPEAKER_00: excuse me,
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SPEAKER_00: that the person sitting beside us is also carrying
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SPEAKER_00: a history we may never fully understand.
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SPEAKER_00: Last night I saw women continuing to explore the mysteries of their lives.
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SPEAKER_00: And I saw a young woman helping to create the space for that exploration.
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SPEAKER_00: There was no age at which curiosity had expired.
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SPEAKER_00: No generation with exclusive ownership of wisdom.
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SPEAKER_00: We were simply human beings still learning.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: I've spoken about the importance of not postponing our lives.
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SPEAKER_00: But last night reminded me of something else.
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SPEAKER_00: Many people aren't postponing anything.
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SPEAKER_00: They're already living fully through the very act of seeking.
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SPEAKER_00: They're following new threads,
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SPEAKER_00: exploring unfamiliar ideas,
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SPEAKER_00: asking better questions,
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SPEAKER_00: and finding ways to bring what they learn into their relationships and communities.
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SPEAKER_00: And that, too, is ageless living.
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SPEAKER_00: Not arriving at some final perfected understanding of ourselves,
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SPEAKER_00: not collecting answers until we can declare our lives complete,
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SPEAKER_00: but remaining open to the possibility that there's always something more
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SPEAKER_00: to discover.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: I may never know everything that shaped the woman I am today, and perhaps I don't need to.
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SPEAKER_00: What matters is what I do with the life The knowledge,
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SPEAKER_00: the questions, and the possibilities that are mine right now.
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SPEAKER_00: So here's a question I'd like to leave with you.
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SPEAKER_00: What are you still seeking?
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SPEAKER_00: And how is the seeking itself changing the way you live?
6:36
SPEAKER_00: This has been Living & Learning with Aundria McMillan Humphrey.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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SPEAKER_00: And until next time, keep living, keep learning, and above all, keep becoming.