One Tree

Every genealogy program shows you a tree. Branches going up. Roots going down. Your name in the center.

But here's what they don't show you: your tree touches every other tree. Go back far enough, and we're all the same family. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Every war was a civil war. Every stranger is a distant cousin. Every act of kindness is keeping a promise made before you were born.

We are all one. The divisions are temporary. The connection is eternal.

When I build software to connect families, I'm not creating something new. I'm revealing something that was always there. The lines we draw between "us" and "them" are chalk on the sidewalk. The rain will wash them away.

The tree of life doesn't have separate roots. It has one root — branching upward into infinite expressions, each one unique, each one necessary, each one connected to every other.

You are a leaf on that tree. So is the person sitting next to you on the bus. So is the ancestor whose name you'll never know. So is the descendant who will one day carry your fire forward.

What would change if you treated every person like family?