Family Connections

My mother’s side of our family is in the planning stages for a reunion next year.  We have a big family with all kinds of diverse folks who have different ideas, different lifestyles and different political views.  And we’re a garrulous bunch who will discuss things in a loud way, not afraid to voice a point of view exactly the opposite of what might happen to be prevailing in a particular assemblage.  It isn’t unfriendly.  We laugh a lot and tend to tolerance.  But we will get loud especially when the wine and spirits start flowing.  Thinking about the differences in individual members of our very large extended family I was knocking around in my mind how it can be possible that we can get together, laugh and argue, share ideas and memories and still stay friendly. 

We have folks in the family who fit the classic political definitions of “Left” and “Right”.  We also have people who stand somewhere in between.  And there are still others who might be left wing on some issues and hardline right on others.  We have Republicans, Democrats, independents, socialists, separatists, Southerners, Northerners, moderately rich, quite poor, Catholics, Protestants, an atheist or two and on and on.  There are people in our family who have lived all over the world and others who have rarely left the confines of their hometowns.  So as I was thinking about all of these diverse people I started to wonder how we seem to be able to get along pretty well most of the time.  It goes without saying that we haven’t always had harmony in the family, but we seem to overcome those discordant times eventually.

After a while, in my ruminating, I hit on the notion that we must have some basic, deeply underlying sense of understanding that allows us to get along.  Polar opposites should repel each other.  But we seem to have somehow overcome that law of physics.  When one of my rough and ready, right wing, red-neck cousins puts his arm around the shoulders of one of his gay liberal relatives and shares a family story, the affection isn’t faked and there is no hidden animosity on either side.  It isn’t tolerance dictated by some legislative edict either.  No, it is the understanding that we’re all in this together and there needs to be some place we can find shared ground if we’re going to survive as a family.  So what is that common, shared ground?

It’s pretty simple really, as most good ideas are.  The common ground is the family.  It’s those ties – by blood, by marriage, by adoption – that allow us to set aside differences.  No, that’s wrong.  It’s those ties that allow us to embrace and celebrate our differences.  We can argue, discuss and bicker.  But we’re still family.  We can accept that we’ll never change the opinion of the person we’re talking to (but we might) and it’ll still be okay.  We won’t be shunned.  We won’t be kicked out of the family.  As long is that level of tolerant understanding flows along like a quiet current, things will work out.

When I look at the complex and divisive problems in our country and our world, looking for the root causes of the troubles I always (in my simplistic way of thinking) end up with the idea that a whole lot of the difficulty arises with the fall of the family.  As families have scattered and broken over the past sixty years or so, troubles have increased.  People have lost touch.  Fathers disappeared leaving mothers to care for children.  Children became un-important, or worse, un-wanted.  That leads to abuse.  Abuse becomes a vicious cycle.  All kinds of unhappiness comes out of the ashes of burned down families.  We have seen some of that unhappiness in our own extended family.

 

But recently I have seen a small ray of hope.  It might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I sense that people seem to be trying to reclaim that sense of family.  And I hate to give too much credit or credence to technology but some people seem to be using modern tools to rebuild family connections or to construct new family groups.  These electronic connections often lead to face-to-face meetings.  And reunions.  So there you have it friends my philosophical meandering thoughts for today.

Now go make some connections and have a fine day.