Becoming Polish

Just when in the last couple of years I decided to become Polish, I cannot say precisely, though with a little digging, I could probably narrow it down to the month or the week. The idea first inkled into my mind in 2001 after a trip to the north of Poland, an international family reunion, if reunion is the appropriate term for a gathering of families of virtually complete strangers who have never known union in the first place. Gathering then. I’ve accounted for that gathering elsewhere and won’t dally here, but suffice it to say, my decision to become Polish has been a rather long and deliberate one since then. Recently I have found myself actually talking about becoming Polish to non-family members, strong evidence to me that I have actually decided to do so. We like to think that decision-making is a conscious, rational, left-hemisphere activity providing inexorable, logical outcomes based on the weighing of inputs according to regular sequential patterns. I suspect otherwise. Not that conscious reason doesn’t have its place, but decision and motivation are whole brain processes whose complexities we will never untangle. The mind announces and explains as rationally as possible for social purposes, but never really provides more than an executive summary. So, my dear reader, though I cannot say precisely when—and certainly not quite how—I decided to become Polish, I can say with absolute precision when I decided to inform you about it: today, Friday, July 23, 2010.