My family

I have a plastic concept of family. In my case, blood relations are not a main thing to say that someone is part of my family or not. I have a mother, a grandmother, and many aunts: I grew up in a femenine world. Parents are absent in my family, but I was raised with a cousin that is like my brother. I don’t have a regular family, and I don’t think that “regular families” exist, in anycase. In my concept, family is a large concept, also made up by close friends and non-human animals, because it isn’t strictly a matter of blood, but one of love.

In my family, values like community and dialogue are important. For example, there are some Pinochet’s supporters in my family, but with all the discussions that we’ve had, that support is lower every time, because in my family dialogue is more important than personal convictions. These values are expressed in some rituals that we have as a family: every night, we have dinner, and smartphones are not used by anyone!

However, discussion about a “concept” of family is pointless, because when we define concepts, what we do is cristalize things in the world, and things like family are characterised precisely for its plasticity. This discussion is important in a juridical sense, but in daily life family is simply our relationships with others.

As I’ve said, family is a kind of relationship with others, and we can include many kinds of relationships in this, like friendship. Friends are important for us, and they can be “like” family, but in most cases we don’t live every day with friends. In this aspect, family has an important carachteristic: persons live toghether. Persons who live toghether (non-blood family too) make a special kind of link, that can be called family, because they know people in an intimate way.

In our society, concept of family is very large, and that produces more tolerance. If I were to have a family in the future, I hope that it is a continuation of family that I currently have, including my cats!