Okay, let me start with the part that reflects my core idea best — humans are rational beings who choose. When they don't choose, there's a problem. Yes, we don't choose what era to be born into, what color, or even which family — but maximum choice is maximum freedom. That's why when I hear the immortal phrase "you don't choose your family," something in me shifts uncomfortably. I refuse to be in a place I didn't choose — yes, even if I was born into it.
Now, don't get me wrong — I'm very much a family man. After leaving religion, I lived for over seven years in a mixed relationship where I'm secular and she's religious, and the children are religious too. All to preserve the family. Family can be the most amazing place in the world: the place that welcomes you with open arms, that's happy and sad with you, that hopes for your success and fears your failure. The place you'd do anything to protect.
Family as the Human Regulator
If you want it more logically: family is the human regulator. As human beings, we can't really be alone and regulate ourselves. We can be sad, and nothing will calm us until our heads burn out from exhaustion. Or alcohol, of course, which is also a form of that. We can be happy and go crazy needing someone to share it with.
There's a beautiful humility in recognizing that as humans we need each other to regulate our breathing, to feel not alone, to regulate ourselves. This is the most essential, human, and moving thing a family is supposed to do. To make us see and be seen within our protected, safe unit.
When the Anchor Becomes a Weight
So, after paying my own 'family tax,' I want to spoil the party a little. Just as family can be the most protected and beautiful place in the world, it can also be the place that keeps you small and prevents you from moving forward. Just as an anchor can save a ship during a storm, it can prevent it from sailing when the horizon stretches before you. When blood-thicker-than-water turns into blood being drained from you vampirically, genetic loyalty becomes an emotional suicide pact. A family that demands you pay with your mental health just to maintain the myth of 'togetherness' isn't a family — it's an energetic black hole. We must ensure and demand a family we choose, or choose not to be in one. Sorry.
Sometimes, instead of the family being the regulator that calms you, it's precisely the element that ignites and inflames you. Instead of knowing how to be happy with you, it takes pleasure in your misfortune. This can happen because of certain childhoods and parenting, or simply due to circumstances beyond your control. Sometimes the family conditions its own existence on a basket of values and beliefs you're required to hold for it, or blocks your path to success and spreading your wings.
Function Precedes Genetics
Family isn't just genetics — it's a biological function. It needs to internalize that it's not about the past but the present and future. Family has a 'role' — to be a family. It's not something that creates itself; it's something you create. If the family isn't committed to you or to its role, you're not committed to it or its role either. If it doesn't regulate you and doesn't become the human space you long for, it's not functioning as your family.
So of course you try again and again to fix and improve and optimize. But at some point, if it's draining your existential energy and not allowing you to be yourself — it's a choice. A choice. Yes. You don't choose who you're born to, but you absolutely choose who to be with, how much, and when.
Freedom isn't the absence of commitment — it's the ability to choose who and what I'm committed to. If I'm there because 'I have no choice,' I'm not a family member — I'm a prisoner. Sometimes a false narrative can make our lives miserable for nothing. Notice how simple and true this sounds: if it's not good for you, if it doesn't do you good or make you better — you don't have to be there.
The choice to redefine family is an act of personal narrative engineering — deconstructing the story you inherited and building one that is more honest.
