When attempting to define terms, one often experiences a sensation similar to an undercurrent, one may appear to have level footing within the context of a word; only to be dragged into an ocean of affiliations and interpretations. Defining a word is not an easy matter. The word “family” is an infinite example simply because an individual may have a millions words that are associated with family, and with over 6 billion individuals in the world, the term “family” assumedly has at least 6 billion definitions.
Personally, “family” is a combination of two things of “being” and of “action.” “Being” is more to suggest the passive quality of family in the act of embodying. Essentially, one’s mother, father, sister and brother, all are rooted in the category of existing within in an individual’s life. They may not nurture or neglect, they may love or hate, but regardless they have a predesignated presence in one’s life (even if that presence comes in the form of abandonment). In contrast to “being,” another group of people fall into the family of action. These are the people who are (for the most part) aware of their responsibility to one another. A “family of action” might be friends but may include individuals from one’s “family of being” as well. Essentially a “family” is a collection of people who are actively present in each other’s life.
I really liked your ideas about the duality of family and how sometimes these different kinds overlap. I had a question though, does that mean all people that effect each other's lives are considered family on one way or another? I ask because I think family by action may involve a choice as well as simply those actions. Doctors writing for medical journals effect other doctors reading them, sometimes on a daily basis. there is respect and responsibility involved in the writing and the reading of those articles, do these people, that have never met, constitute a family? I just wonder because while I like the definition, I think somehow the bond might be stronger in those we consider family than the bonds we have with some of the people we effect daily.
ReplyDeleteI like your combo of the term of family as well. I feel like how it sort of matches what I think of as family, but in another way it is completely different. But with the way you concluded your statement, do you think that only people of "active" family mean "true family"? Or are you meaning that it is two completely different types of family?
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