I have a deep interest in how we hold the story of our personal and our ancestral past in our bodies and our lives.

Also, I have questions. What leads us to make the choices we do? And especially: as ancestors ourselves, how can we change the story of the future?

I watched the PBS documentary "African American Lives," initiated and hosted by Harvard professor Louis Gates. It is about "the poetry of history, the magic of science and the allure of the family trees" as one reviewer put it, of Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Don Cheadle, Tom Joyner, Maya Angelou and several other well known African Americans. I was moved again and again as each person discovered their roots through genealogical and DNA research.

Comedian Chris Rock was teary eyed to learn that his great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, served in the South Carolina Legislature, and died owning dozens of acres of land. He had never known any of that history. He talked about growing up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood and being bussed to a white school, where he was bullied.

He said, “Until I lucked into a comedy club at, you know, age 20, just on a whim, I assumed I would pick up things for white people for the rest of my life. If I’d known this about my family’s history, it would have taken away the inevitability that I was going to be nothing.”