How to Love Your Family




One of the most beautiful things to have in life is a family but it is also the biggest hurdle one has cross in life. Family gives life, family protects and family nurtures but it also supresses the Self.

Whether one likes it or not, one’s identity is infused with one’s family. Children learn from their parents, consciously and unconsciously, and the identity of the parents strongly moulds the identity of the child. The family, therefore, becomes a part of the child’s being.

This might sound harmless and, to a certain extent, it is harmless but things can go awry when the identity of the child starts suppressing the individuality of the child. It is true that we humans have multiple personas but out of all of them our strongest persona is the one tied to our family.

To give an example, we are the son/daughter of Mr and Mrs. so and so. This information is recorded in all of our documents. The persona of a son/ daughter is the strongest persona one has because they have to carry it with them while they put on other personas such as the persona of a student, teacher, worker etc.,

Because of the social conditions surrounding us and the cultural values passed down to us, we give too much importance to the persona of family. Eventually, this blurs the line between the Self and the various roles taken by the Self.

This results in the loss of individuality.

A distant relative of mine wanted to major in English but her father forcefully enrolled her in an engineering college. His reason for forcing such a burden on his daughter was quite simple; everyone is their family is an engineer.

He was unable to separate the individuality of his daughter with the identity of the family. To him they are family of engineers. Individuality is compromised for a collective identity.

Identities are shallow and they are temporal in nature. No matter what one identifies oneself as, one day their identity will crumble. If one’s identity is, for instance, a mother then what will happen when their children die? Death looms over all of us, ready to demolish every single identity. In such a case, people go through an identity crisis. Their foundation would be shaken and this would leave them questioning whether life is worth living at all.

This is precisely why family becomes a person’s biggest hurdle. Family is the easiest way to develop a herd mentality. Family can kill individuality.

This isn’t to say that one should abandon one’s family rather one should love one’s family with detachment.

We are so used to the western concept of family and love, we forget that this type of love was once emphasized in our land centuries ago.

Detached love is the purest form of love. In this type of love, we care for each other and support each other while separating ourselves as individuals uniquely different from the person we love. Our identity does not depend upon them. We are not defined by the one we love.

It is about giving love while retaining our individuality and accepting the individuality of the ones we love. Selfish love is where we see ourselves as one with our family and thinking that our family should be like us. We want people to act the way we want them because we don’t see ourselves as separate from them.

To give an example, we plant a seed and from the seed a beautiful plant grows. From that plant a beautiful flower blooms. We have been caring for this plant by nurturing it and we love this flower by watching it from a distance. We appreciate it for what it is. But we should also understand that no matter how beautiful the flower looks, it cannot be us and we cannot be it. We are a flower that is unique and different from the one that we just bloomed

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