Family
Today I had a totally unexpected (but really interesting) conversation with one of my cousins. We were talking about religion and spirituality, which is not something I would normally just bring up out of nowhere—but this time it had been on my mind, and all of a sudden we were discussing it.
Has that ever happened to you?
I have been feeling unhappy about the level of closeness and communication (or lack thereof) that I have with my family, my blood kin. My father and I have conversations, and I have them here and there with my mom and sister. But for the most part, I don’t really get to communicate seriously with family members. I barely know my cousins, aunts, uncles. We see each other at family functions less since I’ve moved, but the things we talk about are still all small talk. What have you been up to lately? Nothing much, just the usual, school, work, etc. Repeated till the cows come home, man.
Some of my friends in Austin are really close to their families. In some cases, family members are their best friends in the whole world—they talk about everything. Blood is not their only connection.
Man, have I been jealous.
But today it became really clear to me that the only barrier to this thing is in me—is in my assumption that my family’s “not like that”. And whatever kind of creature or unit my family is, it is still made up of people. They may not all be people I get along with, or people who would agree with me in a drawn-out conversation, or, hell! even people who are capable of processing the sort of things I like to talk about. But that’s sure as shit no reason not to try. How am I ever going to know if I don’t look into it? Pbph. How indeed.
PS. I know I haven’t talked about “meligion” yet. But I will. I swear. If you’ll just be patient, and let it, ah, coalesce in my head… scout’s honor.
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(filed under communication, meligion, personal purpose)
Hi Megan,
please let me know what you mean by meligion. I happen to have stumbled upon the word myself and would like to see what you mean by it.
I use it when i think about people who basically draw up their own ‘religion’ without it necessarily being about them, just that they create this religion. It’s a bit like people developing their own language. (which is kind of hard to do, even for Jorge Luis Borges when writing about ‘Tlön, Uqbar and Orbis tertius’).
please share, thanks
jan willem
For me, meligion is still pretty nebulous, but it does cover certain kinds of territory. It is definitely similar to your definition—a personal sort of “religion”, something that is entirely mine and based on me. I still intend to write more about it, but it hasn’t fully coalesced yet and for that reason it’s still in the works.
It also touches on other subjects for me – the idea that we are all powerful, our own driving force, we are each highly sacred and individually precious. It’s something that is very fundamental to the way I live my life, and putting it into words is sometimes no mean task!
Thank you very much for asking. :}