There's a scene in a movies from the 60's, The Agony and the Ecstasy, about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Seems like the pope, who commissioned Michelangelo to do the ceiling, thought the project was taking too long. He would repeatedly ask Michelangelo: "When will it be finished?" Michelangelo would always reply: "When I am done."

 

That's a good lesson for genealogy. There really is no "done." So many Americans feel like they are "done" when they get "across the water," or trace an ancestor back to the original immigrant and the arrival in the U.S. But it never seems to stop there. Many want to continue the process in the "Old Country" and find out more about the lives and ancestors there.

 

And there's always another line, another ancestor to investigate. There are usually four grandparents, eight grandparents, 16 great-grandparents, 32 great-great grandparents, and so on and so on and so on. Each of those ancestors contributed just as much DNA to our bodies as the other...and each contributed to the culture--the nurture--of our family. Every generation we go back, we have two more line to investigate. Even with the wonder of Internet genealogy, the task of, say, getting every family line back to 1600 AD is mind-boggling.

 

So, faced with this task, how do we reconcile the endless work, constantly growing with every generation of success we have? Because it is fantastically fun, interesting and rarely boring.

 

It's all a journey of discovery. We probably will never get "there," wherever there is. But we are having a grand time on the trip!