This article is intended to enlighten you as well as teach you about research. Of course it is colored by the authors experience's and observations. Keep that in mind but don't jump to conclusions and draw opinions before you have read the entire article.

We used to hear the phrase "you are what you eat" but in my experiences what we do changes us to a significant degree. Personal identity is like a person walking along and gathering pretty stones. As you find much nicer stones you take a look into your small container and remove one of your earlier choices to keep the new one. Our personality and identity shift almost imperceptibly each time we do this.

Younger people grasp their identity very tightly to fix it where they like it but cannot help themselves as they too change over time. Generations through history do strange things to shape the identity of their children and what they intend usually backfires and disappoints them in the process. They tend to forget that their children see them as an open book and judge their every reaction to paint a picture of what their parents really are and not what they have said that they are. The children use this judgement to insure themselves that they will not fall prey to the failures of their parents. It may have worked in the past to improve the younger generation but the process seems to be failing currently.

The "Bust" babies from the great depression had learned one thing very well. Their parents got into trouble financially and they often went without eating. They resolved themselves to not allow this to happen to them. The hard lessons from the depression were still in the forefront of everyone's mind as the "Baby boomers" were born after the return of soldiers from World war two. A time of terrible inflation and a broken economy had begin to evolve into a peaceful time of mild affluence that had come to the land and everyone it seemed was doing better. The "boomers" however were devoted to their "Quest" which defined, related to getting all the money that they could as they remembered their childhood in which they did not have much more than an old tire swinging out of the tree in the front yard. During World War II, women had jobs for the first time and were determined to hang onto the money come hell or high water. The result is that you had both parents working and not only working but sometimes working two jobs or overtime and long weekends. As the economy grew the economic system adjusted to this new condition and milked the extra income from the couples so that what was begun in an effort to gain personal wealth was converted to both couples having to work to survive. Their "Quest" had simply evolved into simple greed and their offspring were incredibly troubled because the time that parents had historically spent to guide and share love with their children was ignored. The children were tossed to their own fate as the only frame of reference that they had was the hate for their parents, their parents culture and the hard lessons learned while they were fenced up with other children much like cattle in a corral.

That brings us up to the resolutions of the current generation or "Generation X". They only resolve to make no commitments but live their lives in absolute rejection of all the cultural identity of their parents and in so doing rejecting the God of their forefathers. They will live out their lives doing only two things. Searching out personal gratification at the expense of everyone else and reaching for a humanistic society or Utopia that can never be because they are not builders of civilization but destroyers. They have no historical perspective nor do they want any. They are responsible for rewriting history and distorting the truth and substituting gossip. I only wonder what will be the "Quest" of their children.....

If you are offended by this observation please understand that my perspective allows for exceptions to the rule and you maybe a shining example in your generation. This is just a general assessment of the world that I see told as honestly as I am able.

This brings me to how all this comes together to relate to treasure hunting. Pardon the digression but I had to put this century into perspective. We all have heard that research is the key to treasure, and yes it is. It is funny however that the historical research is like the pretty stones that I talked about previously and change who we are to some degree.

The key to this article is that we all lead pretty mundane lives without the wider perspective of understanding our place in history and our forefather's culture. We fail to understand the finer appreciation of all those who have lived before us and learn from the past instead of rejecting it. It is a shame that the younger people have scorned all those who did not have all the electronic tinker toys and creature comforts that they are able to enjoy. Their forefathers never knew anything about flying, driving, or surfing the internet, but nevertheless their world was often rich in ways that we have lost. The early residents of the this country had old fashioned courage that may not be found in young people today. They would set out in a rugged wagon with their family and move through the unknown country filled with hostile natives to an uncertain future where they hoped to carve out a life from the wilderness and far from the home of their youth.

Those who survived to see primitive communities form from the widespread settlers saw also that there was need for more than life had provided. They needed social contacts and music and dance to build their social community and expand their lives. This was the beginning of our culture for many of us and it wasn't bad. It was a positive experience necessary to sew the community together in activities and marriages so that the culture was formed to build our lives and lift us to a higher level of life than mere existence alone. They developed sharing as a community standard and would help new families to build their barns and homes. Clothing became important and it was good to see people move up from the tattered work clothes that they were used to. Their music was altogether positive as were their attitudes which pulled the community together as a large family. The culture became part of their identities and contained historic perspectives of the earlier experiences which enriched everyone's lives and the pride of their hard won place in this life. They were the pillars of our civilization and self sacrificing builders with a commitment to the future. Culture is important. Those who throw it off so easily have discarded something that was meant to enrich them as they take on the lowest common denominator that they all share. They need money, sex, and desire power as they draw their identity from the images that play on the television, movies, and the images that are shaped by the music. They have become enslaved without knowing it to an identity which is a trap and do not grow and expand. They are dysfunctional as components of civilization and are often overheard saying "Don't get mad, get even"!

We research history in order to locate the small treasures that we seek but when we have become accomplished in this task something touches us from the time before and we feel something stir down deep inside us as we read the old Civil war diary's that the soldiers wrote. We feel what they felt in their daily experience and we can understand what it would have felt like to march openly across a field that would be filled with flying projectiles marked for their death. We realize that their experiences were deep and not quite as shallow as our own futile treadmill. They had deep feelings that they were willing to commit their very lives to. Deep feelings today are more self centered as people flee commitment and absolute truths and they run to lives of no commitment and flexible truths where they can adjust to any situation by reshaping the truth into something less. They loose all that separates man from animal when they do and we were meant for much, much more!

Learn from the past. Go back to the early biographies and first person stories of our past to sweep away the cobwebs of entrapment and begin to bridge the time until you too change as you study the lives of our ancestors. It will help you to locate the great spots to treasure hunt as you recall the diary of a person over a century before that spent time down by your river. You can go there and feel as though you were him as you see the area for the first time perhaps. You can study the lives of the founders of this country and perhaps you will find treasures that you were not even looking for! These feelings are good for us and they broaden our lives as they expand our perspectives. They open our eyes to see life on a wide expanse in which we can experience the shared memories with our brave forefathers.