When you think about family, it’s easy to remember thousands of situations that we accompany, we listen to, and even live within our own family settings. Our spirituality, rightly rooted in the heart of the Family of Nazareth, demands from us that presence, that word, and that gesture that is always timely and necessary in an important scenario like the familiar atmosphere in human life.
I want to call this article 24/7 IN FAMILY, to represent analogically that the family experience involves the totality of being. Entering and leaving, nuancing the time at home with the time away, is the normal thing of life and is usually called day to day life, and is composed of activities, habits, customs, idiosyncrasies and ways of carrying out obligations, routines, leisure time and affection.
The everyday life is armed with an infinity of small details that become natural to such an extent that they become imperceptible, become so invisible and current that they can be mechanical.
Only when for some reasons, you go through real – crucial situations such as the pandemic for these times; also when meeting an accident, experiencing loss, or any other event that interrupts the course of daily life, it is verified that we are attached to our customs.
Entering and leaving as what has already been said, was the common thing of our life, but what happens when by obligation you cannot leave or simply life imposes hastily and bitterly and changes habits and rhythms of life?
Each family has its strengths and values to be proud of; they are reasons to experience gratitude and even satisfaction. But also weak points, difficult areas of conflicts and problems to deal with. Therefore, in these times it is better to have a breathing space of what has not been done and what has been wanted to change and give way to patience, understanding and joy.
For all human beings, the family is the element identity that marks and defines almost completely their way of being in the world, their values, their way of relating and even their options of conscience. Whether it is because you have had the privilege of growing up in a binding family that offers a secure basis as support for self-affirmation in the infancy, pre-adolescent and / or youth stage, because it offers support to the ideals of life, emotional security and economic solvency to the vital needs of a human being. Otherwise, because in it all the above is dispensed with and therefore life is faced with fear, helplessness, anger or pain.
To belong will always be a vital need that must be urgently met not only materially but also that provides emotional control. You can be parents, children or siblings; in whatever role there is, it will be necessary to experience to be a part of a 24/7 family, that is, full time, and without losing sight of the individualization and personal project, encountering there the human strength that guarantees a life full of meaning and value.
It is not yet possible to talk about the pandemic in the past because it is evident that it is still facing an accumulation of situations and threats with which this historical fact has changed the daily rhythm of life. But something can be said about it: situations like these have already given the opportunity to reread and interpret many aspects of life, which customs and routines did not allow to be noticed.
«We humans are often like this; in the most difficult situations we usually find resources that we did not even suspect we had, and it is also frequent that in moments of fear, wonder arises, like those flowers that grow on the rocks (Rodríguez, s.f).
It is the time to look from the inside to the outside all the unsuspected resources that at this moment has arisen and although each family has its own unique way of leading life, and of course, that this also applies to normal days away from the pandemic or within it, in short, there should be no talking of magical formulas so that this time of togetherness will be «ideal».
What I could refer to in this regard is that it should be quality time 24/7. It does not symbolize all the time we should be together, but better yet, all the time in which we have to feel «part of…» None should be left out of the dialogue, of being listened to, of being embraced and the understanding necessary for him to find the unconditional love that in other areas is always being conditioned.
Sr. Sandra Milena Velásquez Bedoya, tc