"You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose. But you can't pick your friends' noses." An internet search attributes this quote to many different people. I first heard it on Saturday Night Live. "Pick Your Friends" first aired in 1986. Wikipedia says it is a popular saying in English speaking countries. I find the phrase pretty funny, no matter how many times I hear it or repeat it. Can you imagine the absurdity of reaching over to pick that hanging booger out of your friend's nose or vice versa? Saturday Night Live did. And it is just...ewwww!
There are plenty of other things we can't pick...someone else's pants out of his/her crack, spinach out of someone else's teeth, how much tax we pay, our parents and other family. There is absurdity in all of those things, should we be given the opportunity to choose. How much tax-who wouldn't choose to pay nothing? Choosing family-how about that couple with the 7-figure income? Life just doesn't work that way. Some things just are, whether we like it or not. Picking our friends is one thing we can control. Choose well.
So, we don't get to pick our family. Pick your haircolor, pick your job, pick out where you live, but not Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters, etc. Like them or not, they are yours (I'm talking the family you are born into, not the one created with a significant other). As a kid, there were times when I wished my friends' parents were mine. You know the ones. The parents that let you drink as much soda as you wanted, eat junk food, let you stay up past bedtime when you spent the night. Other people's parents were always so much cooler (you know you had those times, too)! And when a friend would say how cool your own parents were, you gave him/her a look like, "what drug are you on?"
As adults, we can pick how much time we spend with our "born-into" family. Some people move out and never see their family again. Others move away and visit as much as possible. Still others never move out at all!
I'm one who moved away. Our visits to our families are few and far between. But we are not totally isolated from them. Facebook, e-mail, cell phones (with texting) keep us in touch. What we lack in actual time together, we make up for virtually. We see each other's children grow up through pictures and posts. We even sometimes still argue over petty differences. One nice thing about being with my family virtually: there is time to think things through before posting something that may be regretted later. Live visits, not so much. I have 3 sisters and 2 brothers. When we are all together, the competition to be heard and understood still exists! Some subjects are avoided completely (religion and politics-know what I'm saying?).
Love them, hate them, your family is all yours. I didn't pick them, but I'm keeping mine.
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