I may have mentioned it before, but once I had a vivid dream in which every single person I’d ever known was taking part in a football match while riding bicycles.
My overriding (pardon the pun) subconscious thought was not ‘How can you play football while riding a bicycle?’ but ‘Oh no! How can I have all those people together? They have nothing in common! Some of them wouldn’t agree on anything!’ Then I realised: ‘Oh. They have me in common. How dull.’
Since team sports fill me with overwhelming dread, I assume dreaming about a field of crazed cyclists was probably stress related and the people were incidentals, but maybe there was something else about my connectedness with others which was relevant at the time.
It’s highly unlikely that those people will ever all be in the same room, though I’d like to think that they’d find something other than me in common if they did.
Maybe I would be in the centre of one group (not my favourite place to be) but equally, each of those people would be in the centre of their own, with a set of connections. Some would include me and others wouldn’t. Ultimately, there’d be a massive network of people all of whose connections would probably cross and interlink and double-back.
Family trees are even more of a tangle. I’m in the process of working out mine. As I’m half Scottish, I’ve got two databases to research in (and I haven’t even attempted the Irish side), so this is quite slow, but things are becoming clearer.
I’ve got clerks, shoemakers, farmers, servants, launderers, laundry owners, hoteliers (small), accountants and even a writer or two in the mix. But no one gets excited about being descended from ordinary people so it’s fun to relate that my mother’s great-aunt stated with absolute certainty they were directly descended from the Scottish royal family (albeit ‘on the wrong side of the blanket’).
On my father’s side, one of my great-grandfathers was a genealogist whose book is still used as source material, and I can’t remember if there’s allegedly royal blood in my smaller pool of English genes in my branch (though I recall someone allegedly knighted for fishing a whale off London Bridge).
Possibly I need to look again since around 25% of British people can trace ancestry back to the Plantagenets and maybe that includes me. As an even higher proportion of Scots can allegedly trace their ancestry back to the Stuarts, if Great-great Aunt Annie was right, could I be sort of royal?
Lineage (unlikely or otherwise) aside, working out what connects you to someone else or to a group is part of being human. However knowing how to do it is something that some – including me – find difficult. I’ve learned some skills over the years, but I still fear that when meeting new people I exude either an air of desperation or of disinterest. It’s actually panic. Will I be able to think of anything interesting to say? Will they ask me something impossible to answer? Will I come across as weird and/or boring and/or needy? I can’t remember a time when that wasn’t my starting point.
Networks can be a blessing or a curse or downright manipulated. In the latter camp, there’s ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ and the ‘Old Boys’ Network’ for getting on in life. I’ve even heard people who’ve sent children to private schools admit that the child might get a better education in a good state school, but they wouldn’t make the connections which will help them get on in life. The tragedy is that they’re sometimes right.
Then there’s finding out you have something in common with someone and joining a group where you feel safe, comfortable, certain, protected. So far so good.
But what if the group can’t be challenged? What if by disagreeing with other members, or behaving in a way which breaks ‘the rules’ you risk breaking your connection and ultimately finding yourself suddenly on the outside.
It happened to me. Knowing tethering lines had snapped and wondering if I’d ever find anywhere to retie them was necessary to my growth as a human being and becoming my authentic self, but it was terrifying, upsetting and difficult at the time.
We don’t need connections which stop us from being honest about what we really feel or believe for fear of rejection, which ultimately create cliques and divisions in society.
We do need connections which challenge as well as comfort, which enlighten, which let us be ourselves, and which ultimately create bridges and healing in society.
There is a word Ubuntu in, I believe, the Nguni language which is extremely difficult to translate into English but relates to a positive concept of what human connectedness should mean. Broadly, if you behave in a way in which the whole community benefits, then you are exhibiting what human behaviour should be and thereby become whole. If you want to know more, here’s an article.
Inasmuch as I understand it, the concept seems a much better connectedness than the Old Boys’ Network or the smothering safety of a clique.
If we spent more time recognising the needs we hold in common for safety, love, shelter, justice, freedom, rather than fearing the things we don’t have in common, the stronger the human network would be and the easier it would be to improve things for all humanity. I know it’s not that simple, but it’s surely a starting point.
It’s certainly a good deal more useful than working out whether you’re royal or not.
Apart from the fact that the ‘real’ heir to the throne may actually be an Australian, I’m not sure any supposed royal DNA in my blood counts for much.
After all, humans are supposed to share 50% of DNA with bananas and daffodils, and some may say I, personally, share even more.
No one is going to crown me anytime soon.
Thank heavens for that.
[UPDATE: did some more family research with my mother and discovered some bigwigs back in the 17th C. Haven’t got back as far as royalty though, and it clearly all went horribly wrong somewhere around then! Or right of course – I expect the clerks, shoemakers and servants were more interesting really.)
Words copyright (c) Paula Harmon 2025. These are not to be used without the author’s express permission including for the purposes of training artificial intelligence (AI). Image credit Technical Network Abstract Background Stock Vector – Illustration of design, overlapping: 63068618