OPINION:Relatives v. Family

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Photo Credit: Arizona destination Family

Canaan Mobley, OwlFeed Opinion Reporter

Think about it, relatives and family are both important factors that make up anyone’s, and everyone’s well-being. Non Blood relatives play an important role, a stronger one than most people actually realize. Lots of people can consider them family even if they aren’t family by blood. Blood relatives, everyone knows how much of an important role they play in your life. But is it actually more important than friends are? Who knows? See family by blood are people you would like to consider as your day ones, the people you take after in personality, people you would like to grow up to be like in your own future. They are the ones who you would typically look up to. However, there is a problem with that, the fact that the members of your family cause significantly more limitations to your character. Have you ever had one dream that you knew was risky or something that would take almost every bit of time you had with your family and then your mother or some relatives finds out and the first thing they say is something like, “NO, you will NOT be doing that ever as long as I’m alive!” Come on everyone had some kind of relatives like that if they were around at that time. There are people who don’t grow up with their bloodline and that could in fact create some big drawbacks to that person’s character. But if you think about it, they are still being taken care of by someone whether they are actually family or not. That, however, is where the differences end. Friends, don’t want you to be something that your relatives want you to be but to be something that you want to be. They are the ones that are supposed to stay loyal to you and allow you to develop confidence. Both blood and not blood families play a similar part when it comes to understanding what is right and what is wrong. They just always do it in different ways. Most of the time, your blood is going to give examples and probabilities on what could happen with different decisions, but your family usually are the ones who commit these situations so you would witness it in person even if it wasn’t what they wanted. Both show the pros and the cons of understanding each other and mimicking the mentality of other people. 

Majority of the time, the issue with bloodline family relationships, is that majority of times, there are different eras that they grew up in. There could be a 16-year age gap between you and another sibling. 16 years, in reality, isn’t all that much but something could happen that changes a lot that one wasn’t around to experience. Therefore, those people were raised under different standards. For example, education. Some people like your parents would likely have a different way they were educated than you were. Some may have different types of academic standards or older ways of studying. The fact that they are older, would leave them out of the current era and bring them into the one before. Those are the ones that are supposed to teach you about life and show you the point of living. They are ones made to grow you mentally, as they are supposed to show wisdom and gratitude. Non Blood relatives are those who are usually growing up in the same era, they are the ones who are teaching you what there is to value currently, not in the future or the past. They’re helping you learn the style of how things work. They teach you things that those in other times cannot.

Some people say that friends should be the last thing you should worry about because they are the ones that are likely to turn against you in the future when you get into a situation you can’t handle on your own. But that’s totally wrong. Friends are not the only ones that turn against you, as your own blood can too. Have you ever heard of just on the internet “26-Year-Old Boy Fatally Wounds Younger Sister”. It happens all the time. The family members also turn against one another, not just friends. If the family member turns against you they are still technically a part of your family, but if your “friend” does the same? They were never truly your friend. Because if they were your friend, the thought of betrayal wouldn’t have even come into their head. Relatives are what your blood creates, family is what your heart chooses.