Family undoubtedly represents the most important means of socialization for the individual. Moreover, through actions, it contributes to transforming the person into a sociocultural being, and to shaping the child’s character to a great extent.
First and perhaps most importantly, family in its basic structure refers to the people with whom we are related by blood and marriage. Parents, grandfathers, grandmothers, brothers and sisters… How many of you don’t look back on your childhood years? When your parents used to cook for you, take care of you and try to do their best to make sure you had everything or at least everything they could provide you with. Remember those years with your siblings, who are role models for you or you are role models for them, and support you or you support them? With your grandparents? Many of you, myself included, surely long for your grandmothers’ meals, and games with your grandfathers, if they are no longer alive. However, if there are still tubs and jars of food in your fridge, that special way in which our grandmothers show us their love, then you are lucky, as you still have them in your life.
But family is not only the one we have found ourselves in by chance. To some, family might be people with whom they come into contact, they forget their problems, and they have the courage and the need to confide things about their everyday life that they often either hesitate or prefer not to mention to their parents and siblings.
Others may consider their relationships as family. The person with whom you share moments, conversations, trips, laughter and joy, but above all the ultimate of all emotions: love. Your so-called other half, I will say your other whole, is the one to whom you will show your trust and confide things, the one who will help you and you will help them too. You will fill each other’s gaps by supporting each other.
In addition, family to someone might be their colleagues at work. Proper working conditions and cooperation between employees can create a very pleasant environment, which will turn the colleague into a friend, someone you can tell your thoughts about the future and discuss your current problems with.
To someone else, family may be the company of their classmates. Those individuals with whom they have chosen to hang out, laugh, have fun and exchange thoughts and beliefs other than notes or exam sheets. The ones with whom they have chosen to spend days and nights in the library, go on drinking sprees and take endless walks.
As the well-known phrase goes friends are the family we choose which is clearly borne out. Our friends or, to be more precise, our best friends are the people we have chosen as family. The ones who will be there for us every time, they will stand by us, they will be mad at us, they will get angry with us but, in the end, their love will always prevail. They are the people with whom we grow and evolve. The ones whose joy and success make us feel over the moon.
To those whom each considers family!
Translation: Μαριαλένα Ιωαννίδου, Marialena Ioannidou
Proofreading: Κατερίνα Κλαυδιανού, Katerina Klavdianou
