Unique Situations

 Something I hear all the time as the youngest sibling is, “You must be spoiled.” Maybe some of you can relate. There always seems to be a stereotype that goes along with where you fall in your family. That has been something that I have been thinking about this week. Why do we have these predetermined views of people for such silly things? Some of the views come from personal experience and sometimes it’s from observing others. We could all name someone who we see as a “spoiled brat.” That doesn’t mean that we are right, but I feel like everyone has those thoughts.

Where we are in relationship to our siblings also can play a part in how we are raised. I have an example of this that my mom keeps bringing up. I have a nephew who is four right now. He reminds my whole family a lot of me when I was young. Now, he is the oldest and I am the youngest, and my mom keeps saying that I would have been a lot like him, with his untamable energy and limitless curiosity, if I hadn’t had four older siblings to help keep me occupied. Knowing that we all have these little differences, that no one can control, can be important in understanding and respecting others as they grow up. This goes for situations far beyond where someone lies in their families. We simply can’t know everything that people go through.Yet we still label people and put them into specific groups in our own minds. Musician and strategist, Tony Jeary stated “Your ‘belief window’ is how you perceive and understand everything in your life … it frames all your views and influences the actions that you take. But it can also be wrong or limited.” The principles that form our views of the world must be good. Otherwise, the results will not meet our needs.

A lot of our views of the world come from our families. We grow up learning to look at things in similar ways to how our parents or other role models in our lives see things. There are different boundaries that we set for ourselves of what is acceptable and what is not. These boundaries are often not discussed, but are formed through experience, and they vary based on what role someone may play in your life. I think I’ll go more into that next week though. As I have been learning about what affects these boundaries and behaviors I have found more of an interest in observing families and how they interact with each other and others. There are many different types of families, but there seems to be commonalities between families that seem happier. In the words of Leo Tolstoy, “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

There are many aspects that make up each family to determine happiness, and by happiness I am in no way implying perfection; there are always trials, struggles, and differences to overcome. I have seen that the happiest families are those with a loving mother and father. And I do not think that it is a coincidence that that is how God has instructed us to build families. He wants us to be happy and has provided us this fundamental unit to find that happiness in. We all have our unique situations, some of us come from big families and some of us from smaller families. Some come from families that have been broken for a variety of reasons, and others appear to have it all figured out. The truth is we can’t see everything that goes on in other’s lives and families. Supporting each other and striving to build connections with family and friends is something that we all need to be better at.