~In the family way~

This morning I have been thinking about my recent visit to Georgia where the luxury of doing nothing took the lead in guiding the day’s events. Lyn and I spent marvelous one on one time, uninterrupted by necessities… delicious... Lyn is the best. She really is an exceptional woman. She owns her own mind. I love it. She is open and generous and available and present. We spent exquisite hours of lavishly sharing our ideas and experience and insights and questions, luxuriously basking in each others minds. I feel expanded and alive with newness and fresh perspective as a result. Simply, as good as it gets. Thank you, Lyn.

I also had a rare chance to be invited into the mind-life of sixteen year old Kendall. She is beautiful young woman living the critical day to day, social life of the teenage world. What I found delightful was that as significant as this all was, she was yet exploring her inner world as she goes, and being willing to share it. I wonder how many teenagers do this sort of inner accounting, while they’re caught up in surviving with style and a semblance of dignity while levying for status and position. ~Few.

The teenage time-period, is a critical passage in life in which relationships with peers permeates all the choices we make. And the how well we do that often defines who we enter adulthood as. It is delightful to see such inquisitiveness and personal resolve at such a formative age. What a privilege to share. Thank you, Kendall.

The standard operating procedure in this family is one of ease and contentment; the kind that comes with harmony determined in advance.

Sometimes when you’re around a family, there is a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) sense of separate interests bumping up against each other, almost as if their union had been accidental, or at least incidental as each person was hitting the grind of making a daily life for themselves. (You know, kind of like companies you’ve worked for).

It made me think about what family is. So I consult the online authority and got these (plus too many more/same). Family is defined as:

 a social unit living together; "he moved his family to Virginia"; "It was a good Christian household"; "I waited until the whole house was asleep"; "the teacher asked how many people made up his home"

 primary social group; parents and children; "he wanted to have a good job before starting a family"

 people descended from a common ancestor; "his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower"

 class: a collection of things sharing a common attribute; "there are two classes of detergents"

 an association of people who share common beliefs or activities; "the message was addressed not just to employees but to every member of the company family"; "the church welcomed new members into its fellowship"

 (biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera; "sharks belong to the fish family"

 kin: a person having kinship with another or others; "he's kin"; "he's family"

 syndicate: a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Here’s what I’m thinking about family. Family is really a decision, (preferably a deliberate decision), for membership with a set of ideas and values, and not necessarily people per se. That set of values and ideas then create their own moral code, which then attracts its members.

Sure when we’re growing up, it seems that our family is what we’re born into. And without running off into a track of metaphysical philosophy, let’s say for discussion purposes, that we are, just a defined, born to a set of genetic characteristics and tendencies that make up our ‘family’.

Does that define us? How much? What portion of ‘family’ do we assign excuses for our lack of deliberate decision making about who we are, what our values are, what we stand for. It’s said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living (or something like that).

How deliberately are we about looking deeply into what we were ‘born into’ and choosing into what we feel is worthy of defining and/or assisting us?

I am a twin. I don’t know for sure what that means. Growing up it meant a certain kind of attention, a reference point to a specific and maybe special group membership. I was always aware that this was some kind of elusive idea that seemed to almost float around aimlessly until someone needed it to handle, I don’t know, slotting positions, I guess. But it’s not like there was a secret society that met once a month after mid-night in some covert location. There wasn’t really a group, just a feeling. Here’s what I learned it means for me. Looking deep within the construct and identity label of twin-ness, I came to understand that there was a kind of inner intimacy I learned and accepted as a twin that is core to who I am. I call it my womb-mate technology. It is an easy, natural part of my experience with others to sort of mind-meld with them so to speak … I found that I can know others quickly and well. It’s like an innate inclusion technique. I love them within this inclusion-meld, quite naturally accepting a certain wholeness and holographic connectedness. I’m sure this isn’t unique to me or twin-ness; it’s just how I wired it up. I felt this characteristic of mine, brought to my career as a counselor, a sort of cliff-note knowing that allowed me to feel at home, in-family with clients. And I did, developing a new definition of family.

Actually, much of how I viewed family and what it meant to me, I carefully held up to the light of discernment. Much of it was revamped at this time. I sort of let the old, blood-related definition of family die in my mind; letting go of taking anything about family for granted and started with a level of innate respect for each person alive, having a unique contribution to my being as a whole. Family became an idea, and entity of union that one must chose for oneself by careful invitation.

Today I feel that each of my relationships is a deliberate invitation to be in-family with me just as I am; raw and true and skinned, sometimes scared and sometimes wise, but always in the inquiry of life we share together.

And you know what; I choose my blood-family after all. We each bring to the table a unique and powerful inner journey, which when shared, increases my sense of who I am. Which in turn, encourages me to continue to uncover potentials I left in childhood, but can use now with daring and trust.