Over the long march of history, we have made a choice, unknowingly perhaps, but a choice nonetheless. This choice involves how we think about the relationships between ourselves and other people in our world and experience. In centuries past, our relationships with others were generally unchosen, given by the circumstances of birth and locality; they were organic, arising naturally from their surroundings. Relationships were systematically inherited from one’s family and its immediate social circle, and these remained the key dynamic influence throughout one’s lifetime. However, in the past few centuries (but especially in the twentieth), we have been changing all that. Relationships with others today are largely chosen, not given. They are sometimes planned, even calculated, and frequently ephemeral. These are built on choice, on opportunity, on necessity [1]. The content of older organic relationships above all was the family, the nexus of kinship—parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins of all stripes, even descendants yet unborn, and not least, distant ancestors. As functioning entities, extended families seem largely …show more content…
This coat of arms began as Leonard’s military shield. His shield design continues even to this day as his lasting contribution to family lore. This coat-of-arm has undergone some modification over the centuries, but his original design is known and is displayed here and on the front cover of this book.

Insert FIGURE 1.1 about here with caption below.
The ancient arms of Leonard de Sanderstead. In Leonard's day, the shield would have had an elongated and narrowed form to afford better movement and protection in battle, and a knight's crest was not attached to the shield. Leonard's symbol of a sinister hand may have been depicted either in vertical or horizontal