“Come here, sweetheart. Just like you’ll do one day with the inheritance we’ve set aside for you, with conditions….

There is something else I want you to understand about where you come from.

You may inherit things from people who came before you that you did not choose.

You may inherit a family name.

You may inherit a culture.

You may inherit ideas.

You may inherit wealth, stories, fears, habits, traditions, wounds, privileges, disadvantages, and even histories that you had absolutely nothing to do with creating.

And one day you may learn that some of those things came through a history of colonisation.

Now, I know something very important here.

I cannot teach you what it is like to live as someone else.

I cannot give you another person’s history and tell you that I understand it simply because I have studied it.

That would be dishonest.

You also may not have a close personal experience of something simply because your ancestors did.

So don’t appropriate another person’s experience just because you can recognise something about it.

Learn it.

Listen to it.

Understand its history.

Look at the consensus.

Look at what the people who actually lived it say about it.

Then ask yourself what you are genuinely seeing through your own consciousness.

Because there is a difference between appropriating an experience and bringing your perspective to an experience.

You have seen me do this with art.

You have seen me take something created by someone else and find another way of looking through it.

That does not mean I am claiming that I created the original thing or that I possess the experience that created it.

I am bringing my observational lens to it.

I’m asking:

‘What does this reveal?’

‘What does this make visible?’

‘What does this tell me about consciousness?’

‘How does this affect human beings?’

That’s what I want you to learn how to do.

Don’t steal people’s experiences.

Don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t.

Don’t erase where something came from.

But also don’t become frightened of looking through your own eyes.

You are allowed to see.

You are allowed to interpret.

You are allowed to question.

You are allowed to disagree.

And you are allowed to be changed by what you discover.

Just stay truthful about where your perspective ends and another person’s experience begins.

And this applies to you too.

Don’t simply follow whoever tells you who you are supposed to be.

Not because they’re evil.

Not because they’re wrong.

But because nobody else gets to live your consciousness for you.

You have to discover who you are.

Sometimes you will think you are one thing and discover that you are something else.

Sometimes you will love something and later realise that it wasn’t yours.

Sometimes you will reject something and later understand why it mattered.

That’s okay.

Keep questioning yourself.

Not because you should distrust yourself, but because consciousness is always capable of showing you more.

And don’t just follow people because they appear certain.

Look for the consensus.

Look for the pattern.

Look for what remains true when you examine it from more than one direction.

Then listen to your own intuition.

Because your job is not to become a copy of anyone.

Your job is to become exactly who you are here to become.

And I believe that when you stay close enough to your own consciousness to recognise that person, it will lead you toward your purpose.

But arriving at your purpose is not the end.

That’s where another challenge begins.

You then have to decide what you’re going to do with it.

Who are you going to become inside it?

How are you going to express it?

How are you going to deliver it?

How are you going to bring it to other human beings?

And can you do all of that while remaining as truthful and as clear as you possibly can?

That is where your character will be built.

And sweetheart, there is something else I want you to understand about your inheritance.

You do not break a chain simply by feeling guilty about being connected to it.

You break it by refusing to reproduce what made the chain harmful.

So if you come from a lineage that took without listening, learn to listen.

If it spoke for other people, learn to let people speak for themselves.

If it concealed its intentions, learn to express yours.

If it used power to define reality for everyone else, learn to question your own definitions.

If it refused to hear what contradicted it, learn to welcome correction.

You don’t have to spend your life apologising for being born.

But you do have to take responsibility for what you do with what you inherited.

And that is why truth matters so much.

Because the more truthful you are with yourself and with other people, the less able you become to continue a pattern built on concealment, distortion and silence.

You are already changing the lineage every time you say what you actually mean.

Every time you admit that you were wrong.

Every time you ask instead of assuming.

Every time you listen instead of speaking over someone.

Every time you refuse to pretend that you know an experience that you haven’t lived.

Every time you acknowledge where something came from before carrying your own perspective into it.

That’s how you break a chain.

Not by becoming the opposite caricature of the people who came before you.

By becoming more conscious than the pattern itself.

And don’t confuse loudness with honesty either.

Sometimes people can speak very confidently while saying very little of themselves.

Sometimes a culture can become so uncomfortable with direct expression that it turns awkwardness into entertainment.

That’s why I want you to become comfortable saying what you actually think and feel.

Not cruelly.

Not carelessly.

Clearly.

Because consciousness shouldn’t need a performance to communicate.

You are allowed to be direct.

You are allowed to be thoughtful.

You are allowed to say:

‘This is what I see.’

‘This is what I think.’

‘This is what I feel.’

‘This is what I don’t know.’

‘This is where I disagree.’

‘This is where I need to learn more.’

And when you do that, you aren’t simply escaping someone else’s history.

You’re becoming responsible for your own.

So remember:

You are not your ancestors.

You are not the world’s idea of you.

You are not your inheritance.

You are not the stereotypes attached to your history.

And you are not required to reject everything that came before you simply because some of it was harmful.

Take what is true.

Question what isn’t.

Repair what needs repairing.

Leave behind what should never be reproduced.

And then become who your consciousness is asking you to become.

Because your purpose isn’t waiting for you inside somebody else’s identity.

It is waiting inside the person you choose to become from everything you have been given.

And when you arrive there, the real work begins:

How clearly can you bring that person into the world?”