Utku Kaynar
Six: Family
Photo by Seljan Salim on Unsplash.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019 / Istanbul Airport
Ada,
Today we are going to talk about something that will be part of your life from birth to death. Family.
As you now know, family is a concept that encompasses all your biological relatives, or, in its narrower sense, your mother, father, and siblings. Later on, that close circle may also include your spouse and children.
As I have said in my earlier letters, for now, that close circle in its smallest form consists of your mother and me. We wanted you very much when we brought you into the world, awaited you with excitement every moment, and every moment you spend with us feels like a miracle.
We are ready to love, accept, and support you unconditionally for a lifetime. We love you so much. As you have already shown, you give back more of that love and care every day. Witnessing the daily growth of your mind, spirit, and body is an extraordinary feeling.
Beyond that, you are also part of a larger family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, ready to love you at every stage of your life.
All these people will love, support, and accept you as far as their lives and circumstances allow. You are still too little to understand this, but for some of your fellow human beings, these are enormous, unattainable luxuries. Yet we are all different, and we all need to be loved and accepted.
Of course, that is not all family means… Do you know why?
Some families stop functioning over time and begin to wear down the people within them—most often because of the failure to accept one another that I mentioned above. Not all families are like this, of course, but there is no rule saying every relative will love you, or that you will love them. If you think about it, the difference between family and relatives is that the former are ready to love and accept you unconditionally, and to support you no matter what. Relatives, on the other hand, are people with whom you share genes.
If you define family through love, support, and respect, rather than shared genetics, you will see that your family need not be limited to your relatives. In the longer term, people you do not know at all today will join us as part of your family, to love and support you throughout your life. As close friends, friends, your spouse, or your partner.
Of course, this does not work in only one direction. You, too, will join other people's families in this way.
In other words, a person is not limited to the family they are given. Through relationships carefully nurtured throughout life, they build another family for themselves. At different times in your life, people you feel close to will become almost like members of your family. That is both necessary and natural.
Ada, the fundamental values that define a family are unconditional love, respect, kindness, and acceptance. The people who try to help you find your true path or potential, who support you without hurting you, and who stand beside you whether you stumble or blossom—those people are your family.
Do you remember how I spoke in earlier letters about the genes you share with other living things in nature? The whole world, with its animals and plants, is humanity's close or distant kin. Nearly all land-dwelling creatures, for example, descend from this little fellow, who lived about 375 million years ago:
Tiktaalik — from the book Your Inner Fish
That being so, you should treat all of humanity, animals, and plants with the same kindness you would show your relatives. You must not treat anyone as an outsider or belittle them for their beliefs, education, religion, language, or race. You need to understand that everyone is born with certain rights and retains those rights no matter what happens to them in life.
This shared genetic heritage, and our obligation to protect the natural world that cannot defend itself against the civilization we have built, with its unquestionable superiority, are at the heart of what we now call human and animal rights.
Ada, on planet Earth, the only home we know, we must build a life together as one great family that can be passed on to the generations after you. And the first step, my daughter, is to see no one as separate from yourself. Remember, we are all simply different parts of the same whole.
With love,
Dad.