On the face of it, families are an interesting thing. It’s a group of people bound together by some sort of blood relationship. And historically it has been the strongest bond someone can have with a group, or at least it is the first bond many people think of before their ethnic group, nationality, etc…

But other than blood, there isn’t always a whole lot of similarities between members of a family. 

Take my moms side for instance. There’s an unspoken agreement to not talk about politics or beliefs of any kind, because I think we all know that between us, we have a lot of different beliefs that could cause a lot of conflict if we were to talk about them openly. So we just don’t talk about them. This does seem like a somewhat avoidant tactic. But it does work if the intended effect is to get along with each other a few times a year. 

But maybe that tactic is only as good as long as the good tines last. I could see a lot of these differences really coming to light if life got more difficult for a lot of us. Maybe it’s best to cross that bridge when (if) we ever come to it. 

But yeah, families are a weird group to be a part of. A very logical one for sure. It’s a guaranteed group for many people, unlike a close-knit friend group, which can be very much up to chance for a person to find in their life. 

I think with my own extended family, we have settled in to a “comfortable unfamiliarity” with each other. Except for the rare drunk conversation, we don’t often ask each other about our lives, interests, and passions. There’s a lot of love, for sure, but there’s also a distance to that love. Maybe it’s because we only see each other a few times a year. 

But I am grateful for the lack of conflict. One look at Reddit, and you can see just how stressful the holidays can be for people. A lot of people have abusive, toxic, or otherwise unpleasant families to be around. So I am grateful that we don’t have a lot of open conflict. There are fights and hurt feelings, of course, we’d be robots otherwise. But these conflicts do not approach anything close to some of the stuff I’ve read on the internet. 

The obligation one might feel to participate in family events can be a strange one. Since families have throughout history been such an important group, it makes sense that our contemporary culture would put a lot of pressure on people to spend time with their families, even if these families are not people they would otherwise want to be around. 

You do here sometimes about a family that is just very tight-knit and gets along to an uncanny degree. This usually seems to be when the family shares most (if not all) the same values and beliefs as one another, and that they care about supporting each other. These rare family units are always fun to see because you can tell how much they like spending time around each other. I think my family has glimpses of these moments together, but we are such different people that there will always be some sort of distance. 

I think the closest I get is with my nuclear family. My Brother, my Mom, and my Dad. Though my parents are divorced, we are all really close with each other. And we genuinely love to spend time together, though we do get on each other’s nerves at times, of course. But I am so grateful for this. I wouldn’t doubt for a second whether or not they have my back, and that I have theirs. I feel this with my little brother most of all. Whenever we are together, we get along so well, and it’s nice to feel like I’m around someone on the same wavelength as me. While my brother and I are not at all the same person, we understand each other and have a lot of similar mannerisms and ways of thought. I mean, on paper, we couldn’t be more different. I was (and still am) a granola eating, sandal wearing, hippy dippy kind of guy. And my brother did sports his whole life, played college football, and got a business degree. But despite these things, we still get along super well. We bond over things like board games and puzzles, we joke about stupid stuff and laugh at the same fart jokes. It’s these things that keep us tight and together. They all build to the feeling I have of just complete and utter trust in my brother. I would trust him in anything and would never think he would have ill intent in any of his actions. I am so grateful for such a thing, one only needs to look at dynastic feuds or siblings fighting over an estate to see the opposite of what I have with my brother. 

But yeah, family dynamics are weird. I think people shouldn’t feel obligated to participate in their blood families if they don’t want to. Chosen families are just as valid and often bring more meaning and joy to someone in my experience. But if you have a good blood family, don’t take that for granted either. Hang with people that make you feel good.

Party on