I've always been told that I'm an old soul, ever since I was a child. However, I never understood the value of that statement until I reached college. Among all of the homework and parties with friends, I learned a new skill set at my retail job as a sales associate at a bead store. Yes, a bead store. My mom bought The Beadles bead shop in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma after she retired from being a high school counselor for at risk youth. I learned about the craft of jewelry making, of course, but I also picked up something apart from that: attachment to something ancient. Yes, a bead is simply a small piece of glass, metal, precious or semiprecious stone. But what it represents is something far beyond their surface make, a lesson that needs to be re-learned in the modern world.

Beads are one of the first known forms of currency that our world has known. These pieces of earth have been used in trade for labor, for goods, and as a means of organization in the growth of humanity. A necklace of stone could have been the price of a home or a meal. Of course, the beads carry a story of their own. Understanding beads and the jewelry crafting market can say a lot about the world in both old traditions and in modern ways. Precious and semiprecious stones are organic material from the surface of the earth that has been made from pressure and heat in various environments to create their chemical makeup. Each variation of chemical compounds creates for different colors, striations, and texture. In connection with scarcity and government involvement , this combination generates what we consider a rare and valuable stone. If you were to sit and consider the background for each stone on a piece of jewelry, you are looking at a connection to the earth. Something that is a part of you.

Glass can have a similar story as well. Of course we have natural glass, but also man made glass from Eastern Europe, namely the Czech Republic, and Asia, largely from China and Japan. This glass provides world views and understanding the markets of trade and the future of these industries in those countries. The Czech Republic is seeing a vast decline in interest in glass making from the up and coming generations. With the rise in technology, the desire to create and enamel beautiful pieces of glass has lost its luster. It is thought that in the next 10 to 20 years, there will be little to no glass buttons or pendants from the Czech Republic according to importers. Czech buttons and glass have been a part of the global economy for generations, and without further interest, these tiny pieces of art will rise in value and become antiquities in the future. Native Americans also use Czech seed beads for ceremonial regalia in pow-wows and other gatherings. Without further exportation of Czech beads, there will be a drastic change in modern Native American beadwork, as glass beads from Japan, the other country of large glass bead production, have a separately distinct shape. With a further understanding of these everyday objects, you can further understand the world.

In order to remember the connection to the ancient, it is important to take a step back and change your point of view. As the world feels like it is moving so rapidly, we need to remember that we are not the first people to pick up our feet and run. We are not the first people to complete a sun salutation, even though the yoga mat may be new. We are not the first people to discover a melody, or pick up an instrument. When we move through day-to-day life, we, as a society, can see that our connection to our ancestors has never gone away, but is actually ever present. For a moment today, we should pause, close our eyes, and take a deep breath and remember that we are still a part of humanity, something larger than ourselves. This connection, now more than ever, needs to be brought back to the surface, for someday, we will be considered ancient too.