All my life, I was told the same story about my great-grandfather, a man so dedicated to the law that I knew him only as Vakil Thatha, or, in English, “lawyer grandfather.” 

Vakil Thatha was born sometime in the 1920s, though no one can ever pin down any exact numbers for me. From a young age, Vakil Thatha dreamed of becoming a lawyer. He went on to attend law school, then returned home to bring his wisdom back to the people who raised him.

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He began a practice and was immediately successful, the go-to man for all problems that required a learned person. Vakil Thatha was selected as the only man intelligent enough to parlay with a group of tribal villagers who lived on the outskirts of town and hurled spears at any outsiders on their land. 

Using his wit, charm and compassion, my great-grandfather overcame the bigotry of these territorial villagers and became their first-ever lawyer. From then on, he advocated for them, protecting their land rights and affirming their sovereignty. His life was cut short by a heart attack, but his legacy lives on as a pillar of strength, intelligence and kindness.

If that sounds obviously exaggerated, it is. Family legends are designed for just that — to produce legends. Legends are not complex characters with flaws, hopes and dreams. Legends are rockstars! Your great-grand-meemaw or peepaw who fought in World War II doesn’t need to have their less admirable qualities passed down through the generations. 

Instead, a process of unconscious whitewashing takes place as older generations try to make sense of their ancestors. Edges are smoothed. Arguments are forgotten. Flaws are utterly disregarded because there is no point in speaking ill of the dead.

There is nothing unique about my family. Every family wants to glorify its ancestors to a certain extent. We look to our histories for moral support: During times of struggle, we ask what our ancestors did when facing their own problems.

Hearing a story of your granddad being as scared and confused as you are right now is not very inspiring. Furthermore, family members inevitably remind us of ourselves, so hearing a story of failure that happened to your relative can feel like it happened to you. 

But this is categorically not the right way to memorialize those who came before us. Vakil Thatha has a story, and it is a fascinating story, but I had to do a lot of reading between the lines to find out what it was. It would have been far easier and more fulfilling for me to learn the true story right away, rather than going through a roundabout process of decoding my granddad’s 50-year-old memories.

Telling the truth about your ancestors is a moral imperative, and not just for the obvious reason that glorification misrepresents them. Presenting people in all their flawed complexity can actually be more inspiring than a falsified positive version. 

Vakil Thatha did not always want to be a lawyer. During his first year at college, he didn’t study law at all. Instead, his passion was literature. It is far more likely he wanted to be a novelist or possibly even a painter. Even though his parents found out and forced him into law, he did not give up on the arts. Toward the end of his life, he funded the efforts of young creatives in the community, holding banquets for them to showcase their talents. 

He was not perfect by any means. For starters, those banquets were at the expense of the family finances, and my grandmother was forced to scrape together whatever savings she had to keep the family afloat. Vakil Thatha suppressed the stresses of his job and, instead of seeking help, dropped dead at the age of 50.

Yet, complicated though he was, that is a story I can be proud of — a person who, despite all the obstacles against him, found a way to cultivate the creativity in his heart.

If I can offer any advice to Generation Z, when we inevitably get older and have the opportunity to tell our stories, it is this: no more legends. No more making people into anything more than what they are: people. The confusing, ugly and complicated truth is more important than our ancestors looking a little crummy.