Following the Journey -- Part Two

I am not sure if this is a series or just a structured set of unconnected observations. Probably, the latter. We visited Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The trip was a good analogy to the practice of genealogy. We found the vehicular traffic to be overwhelmingly bad. We were initially stuck on the freeway for over three hours just to get into Toronto and find our hotel. After a night's sleep, we drove downtown and visited the Music Garden along the lakefront and saw the CN Tower up close. Why was this like genealogy? Because, had I left Toronto before I went downtown, I would had an extremely bad impression of the city. It was too crowded and too complicated, sort of like my own genealogy experience. But after seeing the beauty of the downtown area and the impressive buildings, I had a completely different impression.

Genealogy is like that for many of the people I talk to. It seems overwhelmingly complicated and intimidating. But as you get into the research, you can begin to see the beauty and organization of it all. In addition, the effort it takes to drive into a huge city is far outweighed by the beauty of its interior. I often say, I would be interested in genealogy if it wasn't one the of the hardest and most challenging things I have ever done. I have spent my life doing hard things and I guess after learning about genealogy, I realized that I had found a really hard thing to do and I got interested.