You don’t have to cry in order to be sad and
you don’t have to smile every time you fell happy. Each person deals with
moments, with feelings, in their own way and there is nothing bad about that.
We are just different and that is what makes us interesting to each other. If
we were all the same, there would be no point in meeting each other and
building up relationships. Being different makes us unique and better, in every
single sense of the word.
However, it is always better to be able to
demonstrate what you feel in order for other people to notice what’s going on,
especially if some of those people are of any interest to you. For example, you
have to be able to talk or at least show your parents how you feel and why
you’re feeling the way you are. You don’t have to be able to do that with every
single person in the world but it is very important to be able to communicate
with family.
Family is the group of people we have never
chosen to be with and the group of people we should know better than anyone
else. And I say should because it is clear that many people do not live like
this, meaning that some of us don’t even know that much about our siblings or
our parents. It is very typical that, as children, we don’t really see our
parents as equals. We see them as people that are just wiser and move in other
circles that we just don’t understand. When we’re little, they seem so
mysterious and difficult to understand.
However, as we grow older, we realize parents
are just like us: they are a couple of humans who’ve had a life before we
entered their lives and will continue to live independently from us once we get
out of the house or even as we are still living in there. That’s why divorces
are so tough on a family: it breaks up a whole bunch of connections and many
things you have learned about your parents don’t really mean anything anymore.
In that case, everything seems to become something else so you feel lost and
confused but the truth is that, with a little effort, everything comes back to
what it once was or at least something like it.
Then there are siblings, who depending on the
age gap, can seem like friends or like some other strangers, like parents. If
they age gap is not so big between siblings, the possibility of having a true
friendship develop between them is very high. That’s simply because you treat
the people your same age as friends and equals and you tend to get closer to
them because interests are similar and you are able to understand each other.
When the age gap is too big however, the level of friendship can be high or
very low, reaching the level of friendship you have with your parents when
you’re young.
What’s great about brothers and sisters is
that you get and instant set of friends that way, or at least the possibility
of having them in the house, different from school friends that come and go
because hey have their own separate lives that may run close but never really
parallel to your life. Of course, sibling don’t have similar lives but at least
the first fifteen years of life is frequently similar as you probably all go to
the same school, you share all those meals during the week, the holidays, the
moments with the parents and a very large array of things that come with the
fact that you live in family.
Of course, there are many types of families,
some of them not even having siblings or both parents or even parents at all.
Besides that, there are families that do not really believe there should be a
tight relationship between parents and children as in the old days people
believed children only had to respect their elders and that’s what was required
in a family. Love was something that people supposedly felt but it wasn’t the
same kind of feeling we think of today. People tended to be colder before
because it was more practical, especially as families were a lot larger: there
could be up to ten children in one household or more so there was no real sense
of “having to” love them all deeply and without reservations. There was
responsibility and respect and that was it.
Of course, the fact that there should be love
in a family doesn’t mean that it’s going to be perfect every single day. Family
relationships can be as difficult as relationships with other people and that
frequently has a lot to do with how complicated things are in the household,
the moments of life you and your family are going through and the personalities
of each person. There can be days when everything is laughter and beautiful and
everyone gets along in the most respectful but also thoughtful manner. On the
other hand, you can have days when everything is a constant fight, everything
is a problem and all the words that you speak might be cause for some sort of
quarrel.
But that’s exactly what a family is supposed
to look like, The old days when everything had to be said in the most proper of
words even if you were addressing your brother or your mother are done. And
doesn’t mean that everyone speaks in the most awful manner to their family but
that the relationship has evolved and its now possible to get closer through
the language and through the best words that you can use to communicate with
people you have loved and seen for so long. Family is something very strange
and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are so many forms of it all around
the planet. Even in the building we are living in there could be dozens of
varieties.
That
probably why beginning a new family is so strange at first. No one really knows
how to properly do it but you always have the example that you received at
home. Even if it isn’t the best example in the world, it should be enough to
get you started in the basics of creating a new family. And nowadays, the
process can be done much slowly that before because in the modern world not
many people are able to establish themselves outside the familiar home and then
not many are willing to stop their careers and so on in order to create a home,
which often includes bringing a new member of the family to the world.
Some people think it is better to save some
money before “looking for” their first kid. Some others think it’s better to
have a child early in life, in order to enjoy the upbringing and being able to
cope with what childhood entails. It’s not the same to be a parent in your
twenties than in your sixties. There are both advantages and disadvantages to
each way of doing it. And then, there are also the “unexpected” arrivals, which
normally happen when people are young but can also happen later. In those case,
you’re just pushed into adulthood and family.
Pieces tend to come together when a family is
being formed. Money may not be coming in huge amounts and it may be difficult
to find a proper place but people always seem to be able to make it no matter
what. Like in the past, families today can thrive despite of difficulties. The
difficult thing, probably, is to keep yourself in that perfect balance as you
try to make it all better for you and your new family. They are probably many
things missing but it’s just like a game of domino’s or a puzzle: every piece
will find its spot in time, if things are done correctly, with the best
intentions.
Families have always been here, in whatever
shape or forms it was, and they will continue to be here in other forms we
might have not consider at this point. It is silly to think the family
structure is just one and that only that one should be achieved and respected
by every single human being, when most humans have thrived among what people
now call “non traditional families”, as if tradition wasn’t something that
keeps evolving every single days without stopping.
Anyway, our family is that group of people
life got us to be with. It put us with them for a reason and it is up to every
single one of us to find out, if we want. But we don’t have to. The best thing
is to appreciate all of those people that surround us as we grow up and help us
be better and achieve everything we want from life.
