Families

 Now I've been in a place where I've been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking. This page of digital text is the result of that. It's a stream of consciousness that began and was deleted four times before I decided to really let things rip. 

I know that not everyone has the perfect family. Or feels comfortable addressing there's in any fashion. But it's all I could think about lately. 

The complexity of parent-child relationships, of sibling relationships can never be understated. Families are complicated. They're tricky. They're almost universally flawed. Yet they're what ground us. They're home. But they change. They're eventually replaced on the scale of importance. 

It's interesting how consuming our families are as children. A mother starts as a baby's entire world and it only grows from there. A toddler's world is filled with familiar faces. And at that age we don't realize it. It's strange that I never realized the moment that it wasn't the majority anymore. When it wasn't the only world. 

I've been thinking a lot about how time and space effects those relationships. How they can let people drift apart. It's not intentional. But it's what happens. There is a reason that people are so dismissive of romance at distance. It's so much more difficult to have any relationships

How to keep those relationships alive with that distance is so difficult. And it doesn't just apply to romance. When we went to school we started to withdraw from our parents. I see that now with my own kids. It makes the time I do have even more precious. 

With that distance we also begin to become ourselves. Truly. And we begin to see how we want to be different. We start to dislike or want to change aspects of ourselves that belong to our family. That's part of moving on from young childhood. We have to grow. That means change. We're the most critical as teenagers for that reason. It's the age where we struggle most to find that independence. To become who we are. And shortly after that age. We're on our own in a lot of ways. 

In some ways that's where we get introduced to the world. It's another beginning for life. A new journey. 

As we move on through life. We make our new families. We have people who come closer in orbit by choice. Whether it's a spouse, a child, or even someone else. 

How to prioritize those relationships with our previous ones has no good answers. That distance becomes even more difficult to overcome. Any relationship begins to require active effort. Active participation. Our needs and responsibilities just continue to stack. 

Now I'm not only a child, but a parent as well. I'm also a husband. Sometimes I can't believe it. I don't know if we're supposed to say that or not. But sometimes I stare at my beautiful wife, my beautiful children, and I'm in awe. I'm beyond lucky.

Yet I don't feel like I always like deserve it

That may sound harsh, but it's the truth. Relationships shouldn't be score keeping. But I keep feeling like I don't know how to tell where I'm at. If I was, if I am a good enough son, brother, father, or husband. I always think I fall short. That I can do better.  Always do better. 

I've got flaws. I'm the weak link. I can be the angry one. I can lose stability. 

Those are facts and the weight of that has changed. I feel a need to address it more directly now than I ever have before. Each year by flaws become more apparent. 

How I see the relationships with my parents in deeper. How I see my kids evolves and grows. How I view my wife and her importance to me has become incalculable. 

It's the most important part of me. And I don't know how to handle it best. I'm still learning. I've still got a lot of work to do. And that's okay for now. But it won't be soon enough.

We all have limited time. We all have so much to do. We can look and take the time to prioritize, a whole lot better.