The Urge for Going: Is it in Americans’ DNA?

My grandmother’s family, the Antons, shortly after they came to Milwaukee from Ukraine. My grandma is the baby.

I visited a book group recently, and one of the members, Cheryl, brought up an idea I’ve been thinking about ever since. We were discussing the way several people in The Tin Horse make precipitous departures, leaving behind family, home, and everything they know, and she pointed out that many of us in America are just a few generations away from immigrants or may even be immigrants ourselves. Someone in our recent genetic past made a choice between, on one side, the deep pull of the familiar/fear of the unknown, and, on the other, a spirit of adventure and maybe a sense of constriction at whatever their family or village expected them to become. Their brothers or sisters may have weighed the same choices and decided to stay put, but our ancestors gave in to–to quote Joni Mitchell, who provided the sound track for a time in my life when I was running as fast as I could from expectations–”the urge for going.”

Cheryl raised the question: Is escape in Americans’ DNA? Do we have a genetic predisposition to strike out for the frontier? I’m writing this from the lower left corner of the country, 2000 miles from where I grew up. And I’d love to hear what people think.

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One Response to “The Urge for Going: Is it in Americans’ DNA?” Jack Cassidy says:
May 3, 2013 at 12:18 am

My father was the one child from his large family their home town. His five children now live in four different cities. We obviously inherited the “escape DNA.”

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