Updated 2 years ago
An Ode to Family
A common misperception is that life in small town America is simple. Far from it. The accumulation of family and blood make for incredibly complex relations. The small town where my family is from, Clearfield, Iowa, has layers and layers of generations.
People have extended, intricate family trees in their heads. Just as in Afghanistan, where family, clan, tribe, cartel, locations are all variable factors, this is all important, not only for survival and the obvious reason – not marrying someone too close to you – but also how people fit into the great jigsaw puzzle of the world, existence itself. You are connected, a part of the cosmos. You are never alone. When you understand your familial connection to humanity, you feel a part of something much bigger than yourself.
It is humbling, and has subtle effects on your value system. It grows stronger as you get older. You become a little more conservative – not in a political sense, whatever that even means in 2021, but in a sense of a yearning and appreciation for the past, rose colored glasses or no.
When you move away to the big city, as people do in the great story of humanity, and just become a single, couple, or nuclear family in a sea of strangers, you have stepped away from all of that. And become isolated. You feel separated, atomized, and alone.
This has happened to America, writ large. There is a vaccuum, COVID has just made it worse, and social media can help but not quite fill it. What we are missing is what Terence McKenna called the “felt presence of immediate experience, ” whether it’s getting handed a piece of blueberry pie from your Aunt May on a Sunday after church, or dancing all night in isolated fields.
It is this isolation that drives people to seek family in all its surrogate forms – politics, Reddit communities, alternative lifestyles, church, cults, the party scene. This is often delusional , because family without blood is often only family in name only. When the chips are down, and you lose everything, the couch you will be sleeping on will often be your family’s.
Back in the old days, when your ancestors immigrated from the old country, they helped each other out. As immigrants do today, they grouped up their funds. Watched each other’s backs. They go from washing dishes to having children in med school. And after a generation or two, all the old feelings of common purpose and community are gone.
American success often means making a lot of money, especially for those who don’t have it. Yet money at its core is an empty pursuit. Your family and your friends are all that matter. The journey not only matters more than the destination – the destination does not even exist.
We need to bring back the community. COVID has taught us we don’t need to live in large impersonal metropolitan statistical areas. I see a renaissance in bringing back the old ways. From J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, which hearkened back to a pastoral England, to the rise of reboots and remastered old games, nostalgia is big business now.
This starts with you. Buy local when you can. Join local associations. Become part of a greater whole. Integrate with the universe. And be fruitful and multiply. You don’t have to go crazy and have eight kids to help feed the chickens, or even have kids at all. Build your own family. Create a personal army, and a bulwark against modern societal ills.
That is our purpose in life.
God bless the family.
