As I begin my week at home, before going back up to Seattle, I realize how different my definition of home is than other's. I have been incredibly lucky. I have two parents who are still married and two younger sisters that are more incredible each time I see them. We have a house in a nice neighborhood, just north of San Francisco, with a dog, and a front yard full of homemade swings. My family has been an anchor to me while I have been away starting my own life because everyone needs their family regardless of whether they are blood relatives or not. My perception of our family, no matter occasionally spotted with disagreements or frustrations, is my own cherished safe haven of love and support. The people in my life who make up my inner circle are relatively typical and expected but my favorite none the less. I talk to my friends from college who live in various places around the United States and their version of family is often different than mine.
Even my parents have different perceptions of what a family looks like, and this idea got me thinking that no matter what your version of family is, you have the opportunity to eventually cultivate your own ideal “family.” This concept of the "have-nots" as it relates to a stable family becoming "haves" in their lifetime reminds me of the American Dream mentality. The ability to change your own fate to be what you make of it with hard work and determination is an incredible opportunity that I think too many young people take for granted. The American dream is all about making the best of your situation and then working smart enough that you are able to fix what you don’t like in your own lifetime.
My mother grew up in a broken family and spent most of her young years on her own, playing in the shadows of her older brothers alone. When starting her family, she decided that what she was lacking in her own life she would make sure her children would never be far from throughout our lives. We eat family dinners together whenever I’m home and we all take vacations together, and all drive hours for sports games and my entire childhood is filled with memories rosy with indescribable and endless amount of love. She turned her nonexistent family into her own ideal home. Luckily, I am a benefactor of this initial hardship and my version of family will continue to evolve as I experience more the significance of family, blood related or not. Another special aspect to the idea of family in the 21st century is that a home really is where the people you love are.
I have plenty of friends who would say that they were raised by a completely difference cast than I was and these relationships are equally important in the development and nurturing early years of any child. Family really is those in your life that have left a tattoo on your heart and the people you can credit your most resounding qualities to. Each person is entitled to a place in their soul where the people you love most are able to advise and support you every day.
The American Dream, first coined in the early 1900s when immigration to the United States from various countries across the world, is a cornerstone of the American Cultural Identity and there is no dispute over its validity in time but I would like to modify the American Dream concept to be more applicable to millennials. I believe strongly in small victories. I think the American dream mentality should be applied by young people to very small aspects of their lives. Whether it be our family life, our attitude, how we look or our academic performance, we can use our motivation and personal pride to get that W for ourselves and change our least favorite parts of our situations and change our own fate. Family is a small victory. Each person has those in their lives who are their family but I urge people to understand that they can be family to anyone as well. I think we have the opportunity, as young people in a world where a typical family unity is almost extinct, to redefine our own definitions of family and change the things in that aspect of our lives that aren’t fulfilling us enough. Home really is where the heart is and we each and wake up in the morning and consciously choose to keep or modify who your “family” is and where is it that your heart goes home to.
