Family matters

They can totally misunderstand you. They can hold unbelievably unreasonable grudges against you. They can even appear to completely forget about you. They can hit buttons to get under your skin like no one else.

They can - and likely will (at least at some point in your life) - qualify as all of the above. They are your family.

Oh, and you will likely qualify as “all of the above” from their perspective, too (again, at some point in your life).

Yet. We need family.

All of us.

Since the dawn of our species on this planet, “family” has always held us all together. If not for family, there would be no tribes. No villages. No cities. No civilizations. No you or me existing to read these words. Family is and always has been the foundation for humanity’s very existence.

Family, at its best, can strongly resemble heaven here on Earth. Or, at its worst, hell.

Yes. I get it. Some members of our family can appear to be more likeable than others. More approachable. More accepting. More forgiving. More inclusive.

What we have to remember is that this is the way of all families everywhere. Ours is really not so different.

We need to remind ourselves - whether we like it or not - of the following fact; that our relationship with our family members is extremely important to our own mental health. If psychology and neuroscience have joined together in the last few years to discover anything (and they have indeed jointly achieved a great deal regarding the inner workings of the human mind), it is that the social relationships we have with our family members can greatly determine the quality and even the length of our own lives. Again, this remains true whether we accept it or not.

That understood, is there then anything more important than building and mending relationships within our family?