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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Your real family
By Rene Lizada
Papa's Table
LET ME share with you an article that changed my outlook about a certain thing that we all hold dear. Family. When I read this article, I literally trembled and shook because of the depth and truth of what it said. The article speaks for itself. It is entitled The Great Escape from the book Something More written by Sarah Breathnach. If the name is familiar, she is the also the author of that wonderful book called Simple Abundance.
Here are some excerpts from the book The Great Escape:
"Children begin to leave their mothers the moment we first lay them in the cradle. Do you think that baby is struggling with all the determination of a Seminole alligator wrestler to lift his sweet, downy head just to get 'a closer look at a stupid stuffed animal?
Think again. The child is getting the lay of the land. Scouting out the territory.' Measuring the cubic inches of the bassinet walls he'll be scaling before you can turn around to tuck him in for the third time tonight. One of the sweetest men I've ever known has spent years trying to understand why his parents didn't love him enough to lock the kitchen door. By the time he was three, he'd had more nocturnal feelings with the local sheriff than at home; every night after the house was asleep, he'd make another attempt to escape.
The why of a little boy too young even to speak, repeatedly tottering down a dark county lane in his Dr. Denton' seemed unfathomable to me at first.
Then one day the answer appeared out of nowhere with starting clarity. `You had to find your own people,' I told him. 'And your parents, even if they brought you into this world, are not your people.' Who among us hasn't feel so disconnected and out of sync with our blood family that we didn't wonder at one time or another if the nurses had switched babies at the hospital? Surely your real family would understand the real you. Wouldn't they?"
When I read this article a few weeks ago, I wished I had read it several years ago. Because then, I would have avoided so much pain and questioning. Or perhaps not to be so melodramatic about it, a few months would have been good enough. I can write about that, but perhaps in the near future when the time is right. The thing is, there are those who just do not do not seem to fit in a family. And when that happens one feels strange, left out, abandoned and even rejected.
The proverbial black sheep of the family
If you are one of those, then you know that an early age you get to fell the pain of rejection and one has to grope with the feelings of unworthiness because one lives in an environment of constant rejection. If you belong to a family whose sole purpose is to make money and you happen to be someone who does not really care so much about money, what do you think would happen? If what is important to you is not so much the material but the spiritual and yet you grow up in an environment where money is the religion, the standard in which you are judged as successful, what do you think will happen to you? If you like to watch sunsets and cry while you belong to a family who thinks that sunsets are a waste of time, what do you think will happen to you?
The thing is, if your family is real and true, it will accept you for what you are and not for what they want you to be. Your real family will never compare you to others. Your real family will not play favorites just or look down on you simply because you are different.
Your real family will never judge you nor condemn you. One of the most painful things that can ever happen to a person is to be rejected by his or her own family. It can really make a mess of you until you realize that this whole rejection is your ladder out. That the pain is the way out because it is through this pain and rejection that one understands and realizes that as the article would point out, you have to find your people. That you must find your own people who will accept you for who and what you are and never judge nor condemn you.
That we need to go to those people who are on the same level with us. It is not our fault or our families that we are at odds. We are simply different. The tragedy lies when they try to impose their wills, wants and wishes on us. And when we do not comply we are branded as worthless, unsuccessful, weird and strange. That is simply not true. We are just different. Nothing else, nothing more. And those who cannot accept us for what we truly are, are not real to us, and are not authentic to us. Avoid people who are poison to you, avoid those who think low of you, avoid those who judge and condemn you even if they are supposedly your family. Because in the end, they are not.
Find those people who lift you, who inspire you, who make you better. Find those people who will not put labels on you, nor say things about you. Find those people who will sing your songs and read your poetry.
Find those people who will dare to stand in the light with you. Who inspite of the darkness will never abandon you. Find those people who will laugh with you, celebrate with you and understand you for what you truly are. They are your real family.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (July 13, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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