Like most people who have siblings, my younger sister and I have had a tumultuous relationship. She thought I was cool, I thought she was annoying. She thought I was annoying, I thought I was hilarious. But until very recently, I have refused to see her as anything beyond 7 years old, and have yet to acknowledge her official status as an adult. All of this is background for my own personal Brexit earlier this week. The things I learned while sitting in traffic for the long drive home after dropping off my sister at LAX can cross apply to your life. And maybe, unlike me, it won’t take you 18 years (or the duration of LA traffic, which is only slightly shorter) to realize it.
People don’t stay young forever.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “duh.” However, in my defense, when those that are close to us begin to age, we hesitate to, or even flat out deny it’s happening right in front of our eyes. Case in point: our parents get older, and oftentimes we don’t realize it until they get sick, or can’t help you move your stuff out of your two story apartment. Or take your kid siblings. One day you’re play wrestling with your younger brother, knowing that you need to be careful because you are way stronger than him, and the next he is towering a foot taller than you, and almost knocks the wind out of you when he gives you an over-excited hug. I was planning on being 21 forever (4 years ago), my brother was going to be 16 for the rest of his life (he just turned 22), and my sister would be forever 7 years old (conspiracy theorists tell me she’s 18 years old). But time passes, people age, sometimes mature, and sometimes move to England. Believe it or not, the traffic on the 405 consoled me as I came to this somewhat obvious, but otherwise totally mind opening realization. Maybe if I had acknowledged her ability to be an adult and make her own decisions I could have been more supportive and helpful. Nobody deserves to be pigeonholed into being a perpetual child- it limits their potential. Unless it’s Macauley Culkin, in which case, it would save his career.
You can’t predict what other people are going to do with their lives.
If you had asked me what I thought my little sister would do after high school, I had my guesses. Go to college, start a career, become YouTube famous, get married. While it took me a long time to come to grips with the idea that my sister had chosen to semi-permanently leave the country, I realized that I was placing my dreams and ambitions on her. Like a Pageant Mom, I had seen what I believed that she was good at and convinced myself that she should pursue that exact thing. I didn’t think that she might have her own dreams or opinions, and I realized that I was just as bad as all of the people in my life that tried to tell me what I would or wouldn’t be good at. So I stopped and I took a moment to think about how I could support her, as well as the other people in my life, in the future, but also because the car in front of me halted to a stop. Ugh, traffic.
You can’t control other people.
This was a big one for me. I worry. I want to fix things. I want to make sure that everyone that I love has an easier time in life and doesn’t have to struggle too hard to be happy. For a long time before my sister left I thought she was making a mistake. It was a personal opinion, but, unfortunately, a selfish one. Because I so strongly believed she was making a mistake, I closed myself off to her reasoning, or to even spending the precious moments we had left living near to each other and spent my time pondering how I could help her to see the light. But here’s the thing. People choose to do things, and make drastic moves, because there is something drawing them towards it. Who am I to say that she is making the wrong decision if this is something that she truly wants? Just because I don’t have the motivation to move to Britain doesn’t mean that my sister wouldn’t. I am planning on moving to Amsterdam to study abroad for school, and that is something my sister never would choose to do. We’re just look for different things, and that, I’ve realized, is okay. I spend so much time making sure everyone is doing well, or on the correct path, or not messing anything up for their future, that I forget something more important than anything else I have said thus far; they are just people. And I am just people. We’re all flawed, so me judging a single life choice that does no harm to anybody else and whose benefits I don’t see but somebody else does probably isn’t very helpful, let alone fair.
When I arrived home I was exhausted, emotional, hoarse from overexerting my road rage at LA traffic, and pensive. Love and cherish those that are close to you. Cultivate your own trust in them, so that when they are ready to fly, you can support them. Drop them off at the airport, and hope the traffic isn’t too bad on the way home.
