For the single ladies, and thoughts on family/friends.

The nightly NBC news was on, while I was working on my genogram for class, and I overheard this list of places single ladies can go meet:

Hot guys: Chipotle

A date: Whole Foods

Fit Guys: Triatholon

Second Husband: Playground

...

Well. Duh. What have I been doing - going to school, trying to get employed and work on my friendships? I should be out there at those places! And who needs a first husband when I should already be working on my second! Thank you, NBC. Thank you.

Also, I started twittering this following thought, only to realize that I cannot fit all my thoughts into 140 characters at a time. But I try! Because clearly, my cognitive abilities for communication and articulation have taken a seriously downhill turn since Twitter came out. Ugh. While I love the blog world, I sometimes really have a disdain for the internet. It has revolutionized global communication but it has also redefined interpersonal relationships. And honestly, not always for the better.

Anyways.

Here is the thought:

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to treat my friends as I do my family.

See, with my family, I am always honest even if that means at the cost of hurting their feelings or telling them something they don't want to hear. But our tie to each other is forever. And because of that, I will always be unconditionally loyal to them. What if we could be like that with our friends? To have that same sort of passionate commitment towards one another, in our eternal bond as people of the same earth community? In our shared identity as spiritual brethren?

Family is messy. Dysfunctional. Never perfect. Ever evolving.

And I know everybody's concept and experience of family is very different. But for me, for the culture I've been raised in, you are there for your family. The family is the most basic yet most intimate unit of society. Perhaps that is why family organization is so particular to a certain culture but nevertheless, core to culture.

Maybe I am finally feeling brave enough to be more messy with my friends. Maybe that is what it comes down to for me in trying to express these thoughts or propose these "ideals". I've always been so rigid with my emotions; afraid to upset the pretenses of harmony with my friendships by limiting what they're allowed to know about me or never allowing myself to be angry or hurt by them. But what I have seen in trying for so long to do whatever it took to prevent conflict by not being brutally honest, and willing to be messy, I have never experienced so much internal strife as I do now.

Ever evolving. To learn from where we were and become more. I think that the development of life is the personification of grace on earth.