FAMILY.

Art : The Truth.

By Sakuan.

Families.

It is important—I know that for a fact—people swear by it; I swear by it. I love mine, and I bet you love yours. I am talking about family, of course. It’s all complicated, though. There are people you are supposed to love no matter what, you’re supposed to endure them no matter what, and you’re supposed to be there for them no matter what. That is what society wants you to do, what society begs you to do, and what you should do. You don’t choose your family, and I don’t choose mine. You love them because they are all you know. For some reason, it’s hard to write about family—I never thought that word would be a problem because I have a big one. When you mess up in society, people always look back at who raised you. Sometimes they are rightfully judged, and sometimes they aren’t. People always blame the parents for how a kid turns out. Society might be right to do that, or it might miss the mark completely. Some parents choose to be involved in their children’s lives, and some don’t. Some parents do a good job raising their children, whatever that means. Society raises your children for the most part. You can be the greatest parent of all time, but depending on the community you raise your child in, that might not matter at all. Society raises your kids better or worse than you could ever raise them. The parent’s job is to help their children navigate through all the trouble and hardships that come from the “real world.” It’s to help them understand what is right and wrong, face challenges, and not do it alone but be there for them through it all.

Family Business.

Entitled to get what I worked for? Who gave you the right to that feeling? Why are you so hell-bent on getting what you think you deserve? As a father, I worked hard for this, and you should not be able to just come in here and take everything just because you think you deserve it. Take this: two children, one good with people and the other not so good but hard working. The parents had to leave the business to someone, so they left the majority of it to the one good with people. That led the hard worker to feel some level of injustice was done to him, so he quit. Then the business starts to fail, and the parents reach out to the hard worker. He gives them the middle finger and says, “Well, you gave her the business; let her handle it.” Three months later, the business loses four of its biggest customers, and the parents reach out again. No reply. That’s where I’m not all-in on this family thing. For some reason, many people would side with the hard worker and say he did the right thing. Well, I don’t see it like that. I see it as him throwing a fit and trying to prove a point, and the business failing is his “point being proven.” In my eyes, the parents didn’t make the decision out of spite; they had logic and reasoning behind it. The hard worker’s choice to quit had little reasoning and more spite. I guess this is because I learned early in life that just because you work hard at something doesn’t mean you deserve success or, in this case, the family business. The hard worker could have just swallowed his pride and worked with his sister in the family business. It might have worked out in the end, but the fit he threw cost him his job, cost the family the business, and now everyone is sad and depressed—all because of “what I deserve.”

Step-

Some step up, and it is deserved and some don’t, which is also fine , this thing we call life and some call it whatever it is that comes to mind. Children with only one parent, I feel for them. They didn’t ask for this, yet this is what the world has given them. The reality can be harsh — some children grow up to be great, and others end up in places I couldn’t even imagine. I was fortunate to have a caring family; I was blessed to be surrounded by people who genuinely care about me. I see people hate their family members over some trivial thing they did, and sometimes it’s justified, but I’ve come to realize that most of the time it’s not. We often envy what others show — the greener grass — but what they display is what they choose for us to see. Your neighbor’s yard looks perfect because that’s what they want you to see: they want you to think they’re clean and in order. That’s why people wear makeup and why men spend money on haircuts — they want to appear “perfect.” I do it too — it’s human. Family is such a weird thing to talk about because you’re born into one. Depending on who they are, you become whatever it is that it believe, whether you go along with it or oppose it. It still shapes you in some way or another. You end up becoming what your family is, whether you like it or not.

Siblings.

“Failure you are, you are thirty still living with your parents, you have no job, you have no life, at this age most people in your family had families or had started having families. you are left behind, you’ll never catch up, this isn’t for you, all you have are dreams, these dreams keep turning to nightmares as the days go by. Society is shouting from the top of the mountain that you are a failure and you listen to it because you exist in it and your lifestyle supports the norm. i pity, you are reduced to tears every night thinking to yourself what if society is right and you are just another lost dreamer. The sad thing is all those who succeeded were dreamers to begin with, their dreams just came to reality whereas yours turned to nightmares, or it is turning to nightmares. Everyone i know is taking the safe route and i would too if i were them, they are doing the lords work, because it is people like them who give people like me a chance to take the risks that i am currently taking, brothers and sisters do that all the time without knowing it. I get to live my dream because the pressure of being someone was taken by my siblings and when i am successful you better believe they will reap what they help sow. Some people don’t get this perspective, i feel for only-childs, they have no way out, the burden of becoming something weighs heavy on them, the grandkids they would wish to provide for the people who took care of them, that is the least they could offer, the burden of being successful so they could properly take care of they parents, the lack of taking any risks because if the risk does what risks do which is fail, then there goes all those eggs in that one busket. With multiple siblings all these “burdens” could be shared around, one child might end up having seven kids, the other might end up not having children but successful one of the family and the other might be thrity-five still living with mom and dad.”

Just like you, run-on, full of mistakes, imperfect…

Live up to.

The dad is powerful, the mom is powerful; the children are not so much, but somehow they still get to inherit some of that power, the sins of the father. These sins could haunt you, or you could hunt them; it depends on what your father left behind. Either way, you have to live up to his name, either become just like him, better than him, or not amount to even a fraction of what he was. this is a sad reality that most of us have to come to grips with. We see, we care about who we are, we say we care about being good people, we don’t show it, and we get reminded every day what our fathers were. We are told to be better or be a fraction of what they were. Most of it is not even told to us by society; it is the man or the woman in the mirror who keeps shouting from the top of their lungs of who we are to be.

“Society doesn’t allow me to be what you and I wish to have, mother. You had me when you were in your early twenties. Well, society pushed you to push me to achieve an education. When I was there, I was told I needed to be an independent woman. I strived for that and got it. Mother, I am now thirty-seven, and you are gone without ever seeing the one thing you always wanted: grandchildren. I am sorry, mother. You always told me this feeling would come; I believed you, mother, but then there was society assuring that there is a way to do both. Society wasn’t entirely wrong; it just forgot to mention that that only applies to men and a minority of women out there. Society talked about it like it was normal for you to have your cake and eat it too, and those who said otherwise were considered misinformed. I believed society, mama, and now I am paying for it. It is Christmas, all my friends are with their families and children and here I am, an only child in my beautiful apartment alone with a drink on my left and your face on my right palm, soaked in tears. Mama, I miss you, mama I’m all alone…”

Generational Wealth.

This is your father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s dollar i am handing over to you, said no father ever.

People work for generational wealth; to me, that makes no sense. It is a dream that a lot of people have; it is why the rich keep on working to acquire this generational wealth. It is a well-meaning dream, but its realities are rather sad. Your parents had those dreams, and so did their parents, and maybe the parents of their parents actually achieved those dreams, but somehow all that wealth never reached your generation. It’s funny how all human beings have talked about for centuries is generational wealth, and we are still talking about it. You’d assume every family would be rich by now, but somehow the world finds a way to turn back the clock and reset the wealth once acquired for a said generation. This wealth is lost in a lot of ways, government overreach, theft, family disputes, trickery, LAWYERS, financial advisors, wills, death, new life, and the list goes on. To cap it all, those who inherit what they didn’t work hard for don’t really know how to cherish it, and why would they if they have existed in it all their lives? They probably don’t even know it is there, or what it is that they are in.

Some people work so hard for this generational wealth thing that they forget to live their lives here on earth, and by the time they are done with earth’s oxygen, some lawyer swoops in and…

TIk-Tok-Tik-Tok

BACK TO SQUARE ONE.

Eros.

The family you pick, your family, releases you into the real world, hoping they did their best raising you. You go out there and choose a partner, you wish you made the right choice, most do, and most don't. You fall in love and start living, time passes, and you start falling out of it. “Is there something wrong with me?” You wonder. It is not fair to you, your spouse, and especially your children, if you are blessed enough to have any. These children never asked to be in this situation, and yet here they are about to be a statistic, not the good kind at that. For the next fifteen years, they have to decide whether they would like to spend Christmas with mommy or daddy. I used to crave love, and then I sort of got it; it was everything I always wanted it to be. There was one problem, I never accounted for the fact that the other party was human too, with a different system than me, a different way of living than me. You can't filter out for that while searching; you like what you like, and you find out later what you liked. To you, both two plus two and three plus one can equal four, but to them, only two plus two can equal four. Three years later, your relationship is full of heartbreaks, and simple misunderstandings turn into big, pointless arguments. Looking for a way out turns into trying to judge every small thing they do. It gets toxic; the thought of them naked doesn't excite you anymore. You don't try to make it work; they don't know how to communicate what they want, so you find yourself in a spot of confusion. You sit in your car, thinking to yourself. “Did I just break up with the supposed love of my life because she didn't do the dishes last night?”

I guess reasons find themselves if you want something bad enough…

By Nu Nazareth.