A Family That...

I am at the point in my life where my friends and peers are getting married.  When you marry, not only are you announcing your love for one another, but you are making that person apart of your family.  Therefore, a wedding is about family and love.  What does a family mean to me?  What role does the family play in our society? 

A family holds 8 definitions in the Marian Webster Dictionary:

Definition of FAMILY

1:a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head : household

2: a group of persons of common ancestry : clan b: a people or group of peoples regarded as deriving from a common stock : race

3: a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation : fellowship b: the staff of a high official (as the President)

4: a group of things related by common characteristics: as a: a closely related series of elements or chemical compounds b: a group of soils with similar chemical and physical properties (as texture, pH, and mineral content) that comprise a category ranking above the series and below the subgroup in soil classification c: a group of related languages descended from a single ancestral language

5: the basic unit in society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children; also: any of various social units differing from but regarded as equivalent to the traditional family <a single-parent family> b: spouse and children <want to spend more time with my family>

6: a group of related plants or animals forming a category ranking above a genus and below an order and usually comprising several to many genera bin livestock breeding (1): the descendants or line of a particular individual especially of some outstanding female (2): an identifiable strain within a breed

7:a set of curves or surfaces whose equations differ only in parameters

8: a unit of a crime syndicate (as the Mafia) operating within a geographical area

 Number one would mean that my roommate, is more my family than my biological family.  My roommate and I have a very special relationship.  She knows much more about my present life than my biological family, yet my roommate, although I do consider her family, does still lack certain aspects that my biological families possess.  My roommate does not know much about my life beyond the last 16 months.  In fact, the person she knows me as now, is the person that I portray to her at this time in my life, which is a different person than when I was 5. We are therefore family because of proximity and situation, rather than by number 2, which is family because of blood. 

Number two explains that people are family not by choice, but by genetics.  This is like a family tree, I am my mother’s family because I stem from her.  I literally and directly come from her and indirectly from her mother.  I have my mother’s smile, or my father’s ears.  Number two has no emotional connotation, no human emotions, other than the scientific explanation of derivative.  This does not take into account the societal notion of what a family stands for.  A good family represents the people that have your back; that will pick you up when you fall.  A family to me is a sense of security. Is it because of my upbringing, probably.  The role of a family has always been that of support.  Does a person with a different background feel the same way?  The gangster in the streets of New York, pushing drugs to make ends meet because his family were addicts themselves and couldn’t raise him with the supporting environment he needed? Did he find family within in his clan? His gang? And therefore his view on family is that of the same as mine, a support system? Security? 

Number three seems to be more of a wider view of family based on beliefs.  In Austin, there is a spiritual family because I believe for what you stand for.  The post back in February titled: My philosophy on Burn, I paste below:

I fall in love with your mind and who you are. I accept your thoughts, ideals, goals. I support what you are doing, because it is what I believe in too. Although I do not know you at all, I want to spend all night talking with you. I want to know the intimate ins and outs of the person you are, and who you will become, allowing each other to grow taller. I imagine: sitting in my bed with sailing thoughts, traveling around the world; experiencing life, meeting people and exploring what the world has to give. Through anything life throws, any emotion we may feel, complete and total openness of being. I feel a certain connection with very certain people, and I feel it so strong with you. I truly believe we were drawn to each other. I am a romantic. I claim to feel these feelings with people and my mind gets carried away into an ideal. Once I experienced it, I will continue to search it out. Take care of each other, always show love on my sleeve. There is nothing more attractive in the literal sense of the word attract. Draw the good and happiness out of one another, because it will catch like fire… and Burn.

This post is about love and belief.  The ominous you is the person who has the same belief as me, my family.  I fall in love with the family that shares my beliefs, the person “you” are because I believe it too.  In this excerpt, I say, I do not know you at all, but I want to know everything about you.  In this definition, you do no need to know a person at all to be family.  You are family because you see the same things.  You feel the same beliefs.  You are awoken to the same view.  So the idea of number one, to have a family under one roof, ultimately means everyone will have different upbringing, a different background. What would happen if there was no family under four walls, but we were raised by a tribe? Raised by the community instead of your mom and dad?  There is a controversial debate that arose when women started working in the workforce and had to put children in daycare and hire nanny’s.  Some said, you are letting other people raise your children.   Are they afraid that your child would then have different beliefs as you and therefore segregating themselves from the family? The common family belief.  After all, we know from history that some beliefs are taught and learned.  I refer to the movie, “The Help” once again to explain this phenomenon of racism being taught, rather than a view in our blood, like number two, which cannot be debated.

I am in the middle of the sequel to Ishmael , called the Story of B.  It is blowing my mind. At the point I am at right now it is about The Forgetting, part of our history that we just no longer know about, a way of life that maybe never was written down in history books and now it is just part of our culture to accept this certain way of life and no other.  I have been questioning love and relationships for some time now.  And now I am even analyzing family and friendships. After a quick bout of home sickness around the Fourth of July, I spontaneous decided to throw a Fourth of July party to surround myself with friends, or possibly people I love and love me- definition four, my family away from family.  I was surrounded by people I see regularly, yet knew nothing about me, and I know nothing about them.  I was extremely saddened that evening that I couldn’t sleep at all after this realization.  When I finally did fall asleep I had a nightmare taking place in the basement of my childhood home. Definition four, common characteristics.  Does this mean like definition 2, where I thought it meant I had the same nose derived from the genes my mother carries?  Or does this mean common characteristics like interests? I like dance and so do you.  I dance regularly, sometimes twice a week so you are my dancing family.  I like acroyoga, and so do you, and I see you at acro events regularly, maybe even twice a week, so you are my acroyoga family.  It is said that language is a barrier to explain what we mean, and as I try to dissect what our society has defined as family, I am finding misunderstandings, and holes in the language we use just to describe the hazy concept of a family in our culture.

It is no wonder why so many families fall apart and disintegrate. 

I mentioned that a marriage is pronouncing your love and family for another person.  What is so devastating about divorce? There is an aspect of lost love, but also that that person is no longer a part of your family.  In my case with my ex’s, I no longer know them as person at all.  In fact, I wrote the following:

Do people out grow people?

I see you with her in pictures, smiling, and happy.

I broke up with you because I didn’t think I could make you happy at that moment. I see you with her and you seem happy.  Isn’t this what I wanted for you… I didn’t think I could do it or I couldn’t do it then or I wouldn’t.  Or maybe I didn’t think you could make me happy?

Are we with people just for the right now? The moment and time in our lives that makes sense and that person fits us?  How can we grow together? How can you stay with someone for the rest of your life?

Are we supposed to feel such lose and pain to broken love?

I look at your picture and you just remind me of an imaginary life, an imaginary person. Someone I used to know, hard to believe you exist anymore.

Your life seems so far away, so distant from mine.  And once upon a time my future was with you inside.
A hazy image of what could have been.  A different path between you and me.

I now envision your future, what it must be, without me.

I hope your happy now.  It’s what I wanted for you.  Keep you happy now.

The excerpt mentions looking at pictures of this person’s new life, (thanks to new technology: Facebook)  and feeling a phenomenon of an imaginary person.   Someone else that I no longer know, that I used to know so well.  A new future, a new path, literally disappearing into the world, (the title of my first post of this blog). 

Family is also the people that want the best for you, the people that want to see you succeed.  In wanting these ideals for you, often family project their own views of what success is.  Projecting these views sets expectations and judgments on your own lifestyle that may come in conflict with their own. Is it then easier to be an individual when you do not have family to impress? How much of your family is reflected in who you are?

Definition 5 was amended to also include our societies changing family dynamics of single parents, gay parents, etc, but has an element of a family always having an offspring.  It is this very cycle that people seem to feel pressure to follow without thinking it through and really making the decision themselves if parenthood is right for them.  Here is an article a friend sent me on this very subject: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/think-before-you-breed/?ref=opinion

None of these definitions have any element of love.  So do you really need love to be a family?  No.  Do you really need love to be a successful family? Yes.  Is love all you need? No. Between a hazy definitions of what a family is, and then trying to make a family with people from all different backgrounds, divorce dominates many couples to a dooming end.

Call me cynical, or call me a skeptic. 

Family can be found within anyone and you can have many different definitions of family.  Our culture doesn't quite capture the emotional aspect of what families really are to people of our society, but I do believe it is innate in our nature to want to belong to some kind of a family.

I am not quite sure the point so I will end it with a couple quotes:

In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit. ~Marge Kennedy

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. ~Jane Howard