The Meaning of FAMILY

F: future
A: acceptance
M: mosaic
I: indebted
L: learn
Y: ya'll

I can think of multiple reasons for why the "western family" has become watered down, but that is not my fight. I like to say "to each his own". Who am I to tell you how to raise your family?

Here in a poor indiginous village in Panama, I have rediscovered the meaning of life. This starts with God and stretches out to people and our relationships. The most important relationships we have on Earth are with our family. Sometimes this is blood-related and sometimes not. Either way, almost all of us picture a few (or many) important faces when we think of the word FAMILY.

In this blog post, I want to stress the importance of family through wisdom that I have accumulated in Panama. Sit back, relax and picture your family in your mind.

The most important thing about family is that it's your Future. The future is the next 10 years, 1 year, 1 month, 1 day, 1 hour. No matter what, your family will be there. Once the old members pass away, new ones will spring up to replace them. I love to think about the lives of the abuelas where I live. Some of the lucky ones still have parents alive and brothers and sisters. But those that don't are surrounded by children and grandchildren. For the community, it was extremely abnormal for me to live my myself, sleep in a house all by myself. They are always surrounded by family, from birth to death. I love to think about their lives because they have seen the beautiful life cycle of so many people as they grow and make their way through life. Your family is your future.

There is no one in the world that will Accept you for who you are other than your family. Maybe this isn't your reality, but I encourage you to focus on your future family and try your hardest to practice accepting your family members as you would like others to accept you. Acceptance goes hand in hand with unconditional love; love a person for who they are, God's creation, no matter their mistakes and faults. I believe that love between family members is the closest we get to unconditional love on Earth. When a woman has 8 children, it's inevitable that a few are going to take the "wrong path": fall in with a bad crowd or get pregnant too soon. Out here, not once have I heard that the son or daughter was forever sent out of the house, shunned, disinherited, or never spoken to again. They weren't supported or applauded for their actions, but they were loved through them. I think it's a very big tragedy when the children are expected to be perfect and inevitably make a mistake (because no one is perfect) and are looked down upon to the point of being written off by their own family. Who are you to cast the first stone? The practice of acceptance is of upmost importance in a family.

The family is a Mosaic of shapes, sizes, colors and personalities. The human race progresses in this world because of diversity. The reason why many hard-to-reach villages can't get out of poverty is because they do not have diversity which brings new ideas and skills and knowledge. But the family is constantly evolving with new members being brought in from different families.

A sense of unspoken Indebtedness should run through a family. Usually it flows from the children to their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, for the gratitude of raising them, supporting them, and helping them to achieve in life. In a poor community, the parents have to work much harder to find opportunities to make money to allow their children to achieve. Therefore, the children notice the effort more. They also have further to go so when they do finally achieve, they know who to give thanks to. I definitely feel like us Westerners have lost this sense of indebtedness. We take so much for granted, even our own parents.

A parent should never forget how much children Learn from them. Manerisms, values, language. From spoken to the unspoken, children are learning from the people they are around the most, typically family. The babies here usually start speaking the local dialect first before the common Spanish because dialect is the primary language spoken in the home and between women. This is wonderful to see because the language is slowly starting to fade out and not be passed on fluently to the younger generations. I think it's so important to tell children stories over and over so they will remember their family members and also so they will remember lessons better. Children relate well and understand stories better than facts or direct statements.

Above all, Ya'll are a family. It's your clan and nothing will ever change that. Be proud! Support one another! And remember that your uniqueness is what makes ya'll, well ya'll, so keep it going.