Day 5 of writing every day.
Having a family and being a part of a family is something I think most of us take for granted. After all we are born when we come out of our mother’s womb, meaning we have a mother to begin with, whether or not she chooses to be the one to raise you or for some reason or another gives up that responsibility and gives you up to adoption, etc.
A woman’s eggs won’t become an embryo that grows into a fetus, and ultimately a baby, without sperm from a man fertilizing it, meaning there’s a father contributing the other half of the DNA that makes up everyone of us who belong to a sexually reproducing species.
However, not all sexually reproducing species are known to have both parents raise their young or retain living as a family unit or larger as their young mature. Humans are no exception and there are a wide variety of practices that are cultural in nature, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that tendencies in differences regarding certain behavior by different individuals could be linked to something in our DNA.
I myself was raised in a single parent household as the youngest of four siblings. We don’t choose the family we are born into, along with our race, geography, economic status, etc. Some might decide they don’t need or want their family and may even cut off ties. Others may vary in how often they communicate and whether they choose to live far apart and lead their own lives, or work to gather like we’d imagine with family run businesses.
There may be people we run into in life and develop meaningful relationships with that we feel go deeper than family in the sense of blood relation versus really knowing and understanding each other.
As wonderful as it can be, there is no substituting one for the other. As a kid I’ve had friends I would’ve done anything for at the time, being that we’d spend so much time together. But when we returned home, everyone assumed their identity again as a member of the family they belong to, and friends who’d consider each family really fall back to just being friends.
Despite having moved to Japan to work for the last ten years while my family lives in the US, we still retain a bond that remains unbroken, even with my aversion to staying in touch with them for the first few years working in another country.
Friends grow apart and family as well for different people and different reasons. I’d just like to express my gratitude to my family for still caring at the very least.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 