the old self me

After years of growing and forming, at some point we finally settle into our “comfortable self”. This usually happens at whatever age we become more of less content with who we are (or, lose hope completely of any major, even if much desired, change). We come to identify ourselves with whatever image this happens to be, and often remain in that self-identification for years to come, long after anyone else would be able to relate with the image we carry in our heads and hearts. The shift into a different identity is usually prompted by a major life event, sort of like a “bump to a new level”. But barring these major events, one can spend a lifetime in his/her old image, occasionally causing a true dissonance between the self-identification and identification by others.

to be continued....

thoughts on friends and family

Some people are fortunate enough to grow up in large families with multiple siblings growing up side by side, with rowdy slew of cousins living down the street, and another slew of cousins appearing for all major holidays, with aunties that come over to help your mother cook for these large gatherings, with uncles who help your dad fix that old water heater. It’s a community-type of living where everyone knows everyone, and is related by blood, customs, and shared experiences. The successes and failures are shared within the circle, but kept from “others”. I think people that grow up this way have a very strong sense of a family bond and view their blood connections above all others. They can be counted on to help even the most remote relative in need. The sense of friendships that they have learned from their parents were all within their family circle, with others viewed somewhat like an outsiders.

And then there are people like us, people from the former Soviet Union. Most of us grew up as an only child, with our parents being an only child as well. So, our family circles tended to by notoriously small, with just our grandparents, and a couple of twice-removed uncles and aunts, often scattered around multiple cities, and a cousin here and there, not necessarily of similar age group. So our micro-universes were comprised of mostly family friends: people that had a life-long connections with our parents. It was our mom’s friends who swoop in to help caring for a sick family member, or to help replace wallpaper, or to babysit.  It was our dad’s friends who spend hours in the cold trying to fix the inoperable family car, to find tickets for the children’s summer camp. Holidays, birthdays, summer vacations are spent with these circles of friends and their offspring. This is how we learned the value of friendship, - from our parents. This is how we came to understand that is it not blood that connects people, but shared experiences, common interests and common values. This is how we learned how to be a friend, how to lend yourself unconditionally to those people we have chosen to be a part of our micro-universes. Not much preference is given to the blood relation, and willingness to help depends on the closeness of friendship.

So, when the “big family” people speak to the “friends are my family” people, they have very different perspectives on the importance of family vs the importance of friends, on what it means to be related, and what it means to have a bond. They come to this subject from a completely different set of experiences, therefore in order to understand each other, somehow the above information has to be conveyed to avoid any misunderstandings.