This is the part where some of you think, “This is a four-part series? I should catch up!” If you’re one of those people, check out my articles on faith, music and friends. If you’ve read those already, just stick around for the main event.
For almost everyone, family is an extremely important value in life. Some people place family over everything else, claiming it’s the most important thing in life. If family isn’t there for you, then who is? I’ve heard people ask that question many times, and these are the people who place family at the top of their list of personal values.
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If you look at my top three values, though, you won’t find family on the list. Some of you probably think I hate my family. I assure you, that isn’t the case. I love my family quite a lot. Without their support and guidance, I wouldn’t be who I am today. That being the case, one would think it would be right smack at the top of the list.
Having been in college for three years now, here’s what I’ve discovered about family: They can’t be directly involved in your life forever. I suppose some people do live with their parents for their whole lives, but in today’s society, that’s not really how life is “supposed to” work. For many people, they move out of their parents’ homes to go away to college. The person may only be living on his/her own part-time, but that doesn’t change the fact that family now plays a significantly smaller role in the individual’s life.
With the arrival of college, one no longer has Mom and Dad looking over their shoulder to make sure everything gets done. Responsibility comes knocking at the college student’s door, and if the student doesn’t answer it, Mom and Dad won’t do it for them.
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Even the transition from middle to high school involves a lessening of familial involvement in most kids’ lives. High school students tend to be busier with studies, more active in extracurricular activities and more invested in their social lives than they ever had been before. Less time is spent at home, and while the student is still with his family every day, they begin the transition out of the student’s life. Not completely out of his life, of course, but they start to move toward the background.
A student who goes away to college like I did will find family taking that background role in his life. However, I still come home every summer. I still rely on my parents’ guidance in many things, and I will always love them with all my heart. As family has faded into the background, though, other values have moved up to the front.
For different people, those values will differ. Faith has always been an important value to me, and that stayed true in college. If anything, college has helped me learn even more about the importance of my faith. Music, which also has been important to me for a long time, became even more important when it became such a huge part of my identity in college. Finally, my friends became my college family, and they rapidly became a treasured value, as well.
When you hear my list my top values, family won’t be the first thing I mention. However, family is still extremely important to me, and that will never change.
Shout-out to my family for always being there when I need them, for helping me become who I am today and for teaching me about the ongoing mystery we all know of as “life.”
