Family Actually By Catherine Mailly

What is the most important thing to you in life? Is it money? Is it your job? Or even your car? There are millions of possible answers to this question, but one comes back more often than the others. Family. But what is it exactly? I think that family cannot be defined because it takes a different aspect to each and every one of us. Some consider that family is only blood relatives, others will think DNA doesn't matter. There are so many recomposed families after all. It's a personal choice.

The first group I thought about represents the cliché, the stereotypical family:  both parents raising their children. People who think that this is the only definition possible of a true family are becoming rarer with time. However, in the 1950's for example, this was the only sort of family people could imagine. There was no homosexual marriages, no multiracial marriages and almost no divorces. This mentality really has changed and the definition of a family (if there's one) has too. This perfect little family sometimes includes a pet or two, but besides that, it is a very closed circle, extremely hard to penetrate. Does it means the ones inside that circle aren't feeling trapped? I would say it depends.

The second possible definition of a family is the following: a group of people who cares and stands-up for you. It's simple, isn't it? My philosophy is that family should be simple. I don't think that DNA and lineage should matter as much as they do currently. Yes, we have to take care of our blood relatives, but what about others? You know somebody since so long that this person is almost like a brother or a sister to you? What keeps you from treating that person a such way? We should be more open to it. Everybody should quit trying to enclose themselves in a tiny circle impossible to break through. Why don't you welcome your father's girlfriend or your new step-father's children in your circle? Your family can be whatever you want it to be. It cannot be defined, remember?

The last group can create the most diversified types of families: people who consider their friends as their true family.The one they picked for themselves in a certain way. There are moments in your life when your friends can bring to you things that your parents or your brothers and sisters can't. Friendship is such a magical thing! You are not forced to like or to endure these people. You just are with them because you want to. Plus, you can meet new ones everyday and enlarge your family each time. Friends don't necessary share your DNA, your skin tone or your genes and it just makeseach of them more special. A rainbow wouldn't be as beautiful if it had only one color, right?

Family has a different face to each of us. It can be large, small, multiracial, it can share your DNA or not... Everybody has its own perception of what a family should look like. Should it be a rainbow with one or many colors? It's as you wish. Should it be composed of your friends? Or of your relatives only? Or of both? I won't give you the answers to all of these questions. You will have to find them yourself.