The Clarity of Distance

(difficult relations) + (long distances)  = better relations

In speaking with a friend about my relationship with a relative I don’t like, my words prompted her to breathe a sigh of relief. “That makes me feel so much better about how I feel about Cindy,” she replied. Cindy, a relative of hers, is not her favorite person. But because of cultural conventions, she felt the need to pretend her feelings are bad and tell herself that she should be ashamed for feeling how she does about blood kin.

That is not too surprising--most cultures, if not all, tell their people they have to love their parents, brothers, sisters and any other blood relations, at all costs. That is not true. It would be nice if was and many times it happily is. But many times it 's not. And that falsehood, that we have to love someone because of DNA, leads to thoughts of "should" and "ought," which in turn ferment into guilt and a sense of failure.

I don’t believe this myth of familial love is natural—and there does not seem to be any evidence to indicate it is. I think the concept arose out of necessity. Like many taboos, this one has a function, not unlike the rules against incest. We have, for hundreds of thousands of years, lived in small clans and within those groups clear understandings of family insured cohesiveness. In that situation everyone you live with is a relation—figuratively your brother or sister. Having a level of investment in each member is more likely to insure you will have the other's back when a saber toothed tiger shows up for a meal. In that system disharmony equaled death.

One of the side effects of modern society is that the need to give undying support to your family is, in many cases, less important than it was at any other time. In the modern world people can, and often do, leave the place they were born, something that has never occurred outside of a few glaring exceptions (think The Crusades or marching with Alexander the Great). One of my best friends lives over 3,000 miles from our place of birth and according to Google maps, I am over 900 miles away as well. I have a client who is in the exact opposite place on the globe from where he was born—how much farther can one get?

The ability to leave has the potential to do many things One of them is to give us clarity about relationships, by blood or otherwise, that need to be better understood. When everyone is clumped together, there is a high incentive to play nice and get along, or at least pretend you do. Distance allows us to see, not unlike the far-sighted person reading a book at arms length. In being removed from circumstances we are allowed to see our loved ones, and not so loved ones, for who they are. Consequently we may be able to recognize heroes we never noticed and sometimes recognize bullies who seemed to be dear friends.

This scary concept flies in the face of conventional logic. But many times ideas that are challenging seem that way because they have, at least to some degree, an element of truth. If you get along with all your family members, count thyself lucky. If you don’t, you are not alone.