Growing up in the Netherlands and Belgium has been a blessing. Having been supported by modern healthcare, education and comfort of living, I was able to grow into the person that I am today and fortunate enough to not have to go through the hardships that many people experience during their day to day life. I have never been truly hungry and always had a roof over my head as I went to sleep in a warm bed. Our modern life is truly something to be incredibly grateful for.
The only reason that our contemporary way of living has been made possible, is through the hard work, critical thinking and compassion of those who came before us. By passing on knowledge and wisdom through word, writing, art and technology, we created a reality that is so shaped by our own vision, that it has become almost impossible to imagine a life where we are completely open and vulnerable to the elements.
Through the passing of time, our knowledge accumulated and cultures grew and fell around the world. Much of this has been lost forever to history, either accidentally or intentionally, and it has become harder and harder to know from where we have come. In our modern era, I hear from all sides that so many people feel disconnected from their culture, their community, their family and even themselves. There have been so many incredible changes in the past centuries, decades and years that seem to affect our daily lives more and more rapidly, that it has become hard to recognize what living a human life is about.
Though there is not one single answer to the question of the meaning of a human life, there is a lot that we can learn by going back in time and looking at the traditions of our ancestors. Tradition is the wheel that kept communities spinning and made their culture grow by passing on and adding to knowledge from the past. Tradition provided meaning to an individuals life that acted as a safety net for loneliness, hubris and even existential dread.
These days, not many of us still live or were raised in a traditional way of life. There are a lot of people grasping for meaning, tradition and culture in places of the world far removed from their place of birth. In the last decades, Shamanism from South-America, Buddhism from India and Daoism from China have become increasingly popular as ways of enriching our lives with meaning. We must be careful to do so in a respectful manner, and truly honor this wisdom in our daily lives, because otherwise we risk falling back towards meaninglessness and devaluing a way of life that others praise highly for good reasons.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have come across traditions that deeply resonate with how I want to live my life. Traditional Chinese Medicine and traditional kung fu have become the foundation of my adult life and have supported me as I worked through my own feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness. They have provided me with purpose, community and a feeling of encouragement from all the master healers and warriors that came before me.
When I hold space for a healing session with someone, or when someone joins a kung fu, tai ji or qi gong class, you are welcomed back into a traditional way of life. It is not just me providing these services to you, it is a whole lineage of masters giving you their support. I try to honor them as best I can through my sincere intentions of healing and devotion to practicing and passing on their traditional knowledge.
In our modern era, I truly believe that making room for tradition in our lives could answer many of our questions, heal communities and provide purpose in the way of supporting the next generations. Let us be grateful for what we have now, but let’s not forget why it is so, and what we will carry on into the future.
"To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root."
- Chinese proverb