Time for emotional responsibility...

I recently had a conversation about the American Christian family and it's loyalty to the parents. Now this topic came up as it had for me before because of the disappointment expressed by a Grandmother about the lack of her own family's appeared loyalty. Now she was comparing her family to another family she had idealised for years. They would gather every Sunday for a family dinner, no excuses, unless you happened to live the other side of the country. All the sons and daughters with their husbands, wives and children would descend upon the old family home for this ritual. Those that married into this strict Christian family had no choice but to go along as this was the way of this family. It seems from what I gathered this tradition couldn’t be broken. Now I don’t know if the in laws parents were invited from time to time that wasn’t made clear. But my initial reaction was wow, I would definitely have moved to the other side of the country. But that's me and my view of how I would be with my family. I was told that they have a great time together and even spend a two week holiday together every year. The whole family in various cabins at the same resort every year. Now I like the idea of this. The idea of loving families sharing so much time together. But I do wonder how many conditions are involved in this dynamic. I have experienced family unity in my life as a child, and those are some of my favourite memories. One was playing rounders (like softball for the Americans) over at a park with all my cousins while my parents hung out with my Aunts and Uncles. The whole day was spent playing, laughing, eating, getting sweaty, not drinking enough according to everyones mums, and just having so much fun until the sun set. I wish I could have had more days like that. It was perfect.

The Grandmother in question is a nice lady but has a tendency to be passive aggressive. She also has some neurotic behaviours that can make it difficult to be around. Hence the family doesn’t descend upon her home every Sunday. They do see her more than they would probably want to. Showing kindness, patience and love. They all love her. They are a great family. Now do they all enjoy her company? No, not all the time, because it can be hard.

This type of obligatory behaviour, shown by so many American families, and let's say families all over the world, I feel comes from a necessity buried in the past. The strength and unity of a family had a direct correlation to their survival. Survival is the important word here. We in the west have been surviving for a long time. Some places in the world are still in this survival stage. Most of us in the west are no longer there. I would describe the survival stage as "responsibility for the physical". We had to learn how to take care of ourselves and our family's physical wellbeing as a priority. Some of the stories from the pioneering days are hard to imagine. If you didn’t know how to work together you could die under a wagon wheel, as simple as that. Things were hard and you needed the experience of the elders to help you survive. You needed your family to stick together. For most of us there is an absence of such dangers now,. We have moved into a period I’ll call, “Responsibility for our emotions”. I'm not sure how many people have noticed this new stage yet, somedays I feel like no one has woken up to it. But the point is, it's getting so bad out there at the moment, emotions are being rolled out over everything, killing people like the old wagon wheels. No need really, we just need to know how to handle them, not letting them run away from us and cause unnecessary harm.

So the heads of these families are now expecting this same loyalty shown to them that the previous generations had, but that's no longer a requirement. We no longer need them to survive, we did as children, but not now as adults. We should want to choose to be around them, not because of some old misguided duty, loyalty, obligation or fear. We must start taking responsibility for how our unregulated emotions effect everyone around us. Passive aggressiveness, guilt, shame, bullying, emotional blackmail, are all dangerous and harmful for the family. If it’s not addressed it will just keep happening. No blame here, just responsibility, and it's an exciting opportunity. We have been given the choice to rise to the next evolutionary level of emotional responsibility. We can still honour the old way, as it got us here. We are here because our forefathers kept our ancestral line alive. We are the end product of natural selection. We should be so kick ass as we have survived it all to stand here today.

I'm not expecting the older generation to change any time soon or to understand why the family looks so different today. But we have the chance to move into this next evolutionary stage. Then who knows, once we have mastered this, we may move into a really exciting collective stage of mastering our “Spiritual responsibility”. Now I’m looking forward to that.

MC