The Lies I Tell Myself

We live in a day and age where misinformation and the manipulation of information is running rampant across the world at large. Whether it is hurried news articles that weren’t fact checked, conspiracy theories pushed by zealous politicians and pundits, or viral social media posts concocted by internet trolls, we are confronted by an onslaught of baseless or manipulated news that has engulfed people of all walks of life. 

Fortunately, there are tools we can utilize in sifting through the mire of falsehoods and half truths, and that is the combined might of an open mind and critical thinking. Maintaining an open mind allows us to consider all options when information is presented to us, while critical thinking skills gives us the ability to question the legitimacy of the news that we digest. The enemy of this logical strategy is bias. As human beings, we have the tendency to be completely open-minded concerning ideas and perspectives we already agree on or are invested in, and overtly critical of those things we disagree with. Bias not only hurts ourselves in coming to truth, but can affect people who are exposed to the lies that we propagate.

Now I’m not going to sit back and pretend that I have never shown any level of bias, because I definitely have. I still have biases to this day. The only difference is that I am better now at recognizing them today than I was in the past. The subject of this post is the lies that I tell myself, and I will be delving into a personal, in depth example of a particular lie that I held as truth for far too many years, and how I slowly learned to critically analyze and reject the false teachings that were instilled in me at a young age.

Pride has been a character flaw of mine since childhood, and it always reared its ugly head in different ways. For instance, when I was six years old, I remember being completely distraught whenever I lost at anything. We’re talking emotional breakdowns, tears, screaming, the whole nine yards. As I grew older, that issue calmed down somewhat, but it seemed I always needed to find some way to feel unique or special compared to everyone else. Part of that need to feel different was focused on my ancestry, because I believed their triumphs would reflect on me somehow. I wanted to feel that all of my family and those I descend from were amazing and awe inspiring. When I was around eleven or twelve years old, I began to be extremely interested in where my ancestors originated. Mainly because I wanted to find something, some genealogical line that would set me apart from the people around me. I remember questioning my dad about where our family came from when I was told that our surname, Nicholas, came from Russia; that our ancestors traveled to England for a while before eventually coming to the United States. It was also told to me that the reason some of my family, including myself, had more slanted eyes was because we also have Mongolian ancestry along that Russian line. The populous of the state of Utah, which is where I'm from, is overwhelmingly European in origin, sitting at more than 75% today, but according to the Utah state census, almost exactly 90% when I was twelve in 2000. And the vast majority of those of European ancestry were almost exclusively from Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. So the idea that I was descended from somewhere completely different than everyone else allowed that prideful serpent to perk up once again.

Excited was an understatement to the surge of awe I felt in learning of my unique ancestry. All through junior high and high school, I was consumed with everything Russian and Mongolian. I learned how to read Russian Cyrillic, and studied as much of the language as possible. I obsessed over Mongolian history and the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. In every way I strived to reconnect with what I believed to be a distant string of my ancestors that had been neglected for generations. While participating in a family research activity when I was a teenager, I found what I believed to be a connection to Tsar Alexander, the same Tsar who defeated Napoleon in 1812. Being content enough with this idea, and having no real research skills ingrained yet to test the evidence, I allowed my bias and imagination to run rampant as I painted a picture in my head of a distant relation of the Russian royal family marrying a Mongolian woman from Siberia, being ostracized from his family and homeland, and eventually arriving in America. This fiction that I created felt true on a deeply spiritual level for me. There were times when other kids would ask why I had slanted eyes, which only embedded the confirmation bias I had concerning the epic story of my family origin. I believed in this fervently as I graduated from high school, went on a church mission, and struggled to make sense of life when I returned home. 

I don’t remember exactly when the doubts finally began to seep through, but I like to attribute it to a mission companion I once had who, at one point, told me point blank that I was prideful. That simple statement made me reconsider what pride meant, and how it manifested in me. Ironically, it was my pride in trying to prove my humility that eventually allowed me to see the overwhelming truth that was staring me in the face. But it was a slow process. While trying to attend university, I first learned about critical thinking skills, and how to question core beliefs. I began to put into practice the lessons I read in books, apply the experiences from my travels, and dig deep within myself to be okay with wherever the evidences lay. 

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties when I finally came to terms with the fact that what I had been telling myself for over a decade was a lie. I began researching my family tree with the skills I had acquired, and found that my father’s family did not descend from Russian royalty, and had no known connection to Mongolia. The truth was that my ancestry was similar to the majority of Utahns. 

My father’s family have lived in Utah for generations. My sixth great grandfather, Joseph Nicholas, arrived in the Utah territory in 1852 and settled in Willard. He was born in Parma, Ohio, while his father was from the Massachusetts Colony in modern day Maine. From there, things get a little wavy, but from what I can tell, my paternal line goes back to Wales and England for about six hundred years until the Norman Conquest of the eleventh century where the name Nicholas, or Nicol, was first introduced as a given name but then a surname later on. Besides my paternal line, the rest of my ancestry from both my father and mother can be concentrated within about a five hundred mile radius from Ireland to Sweden, and Scotland to Germany, with the majority from the British Isles and Netherlands. This puts me almost smack dab in the middle of the ethnic majority in Utah, leaving my previous misconceptions in utter ruin. I have since researched the stories of the individuals who came before me, and studied the histories of those countries from where I truly descend, both the good and the bad. The accomplishments and travesties committed by them are not something that I can lay any claim to, but I do acknowledge that they have shaped the modern world, as well as my place in it. 

As it turns out, the idea of having Mongolian ancestry to explain inconsistent genetic anomalies, like my more Asiatic eyes, was not a new concept in western culture. During the expansion of the Mongol Empire in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Mongols conquered Russia, and up to the fringes of eastern Germany. Hundreds of years later, many mental and physical determinants were attributed to a Mongol who raped a female European ancestor in the distant past. Even though my father, nor anyone else who recently spread this story intended it in a racist way, the belief had a racist origin. The accusation of having Mongol ancestry was meant to be a source of shame. When my younger self was told this story, I was ecstatic and saw it as a source of pride. And even after understanding the truth, I still hold a special place for everything I learned about the histories, cultures and legends of those peoples and regions of the world.

To many who read this, it may seem almost laughable that something as trivial as genealogy could be so important to anyone. But I desperately craved an ethnic identity that would make me stand out, or at least apart from those around me. I admit this freely today because I have taken the steps of reconciling the truth and owning the mistakes of the past so that I can move forward with greater clarity and purpose. Sometimes I still make ill-informed assumptions and jump the gun on certain conclusions, but the skills I obtained in keeping an open mind and analyzing information critically have become pivotal in my approach to new information, and has been a guiding compass in my decision making ever since.