We like to view the idea of family as an unquestionable concept. We see the connection with our birth and the inner universal significance of this among the strange survival durations of life, held as a collective. This is why we stand by the phrase "blood is thicker than water," as somehow, through our conceptualizations, we understand that those who share the same blood, from the same DNA, are above a fellow stranger. The strangeness of this is that our family members are factually no different from any other stranger in relationship to their self-consciousness when socializing with yet another stranger. Since they are also from a family and have the same view of what family means, as a collective, we all abide under this family business. We base our aspirations to push forth and survive in the world in the company of this "family" as an unquestionable form of proceeding.

In the same way that a stranger must endure the thorough suffering of the world alone and die on their own, so too does each member of our family. And yet, the significance of treatment during their death from natural causes and the social significance is universally the same for everyone. In terms of the finite duration of a human's life, the expiry—being the most elaborate of courses to the living essence of the animal—is treated identically across the world. Everyone understands the severity of death, grief, and the sadness that follows, and in this timespan of experience, everyone who is not a member of the family that has lost someone understands the importance of it and treats it as if they have lost one of their own the only difference is that grief does not fall upon them.

In this sense, it would be far more fitting to apply the term "blood runs thicker than water" to the whole of humanity as family, not just to the locality of personal family. It is true that we all have blood running through our veins, and that there is no element inspiring benefit to applying the term solely to those who share the same blood as another human. Rather, from this metaphorical coating, we have polished the ritual association of our local family as an act of symbolizing something larger than what is physically apparent. We acknowledge it as something to honor in permanence throughout the span of our lives on Earth. Honor, as we know, is something that carries with it a psychic lifespan of its own, and is acquired from carrying the burden of its bond forward—an armor that generates a purpose greater than ourselves. This estimation is where the painting of our values emerges.

Every family on Earth began with two strangers meeting, and through the coding of mating, the instinctual process of love is discovered as the binding necessity that fills the void of creature-to-creature interaction. The question of the reason for love is for another time.

Once, our parents were mere strangers who happened to meet under the spell of attraction, curiosity, and passion. During this time, these two strangers spent time with one another and established some ethereal responsibility for each other's lives, imposed both by nature and an act of will. They created their own establishment with their own creed, privatized for them alone. From this, the entire species of humanity flows, and in correlation to the future outcome of humanity, the essentials of its survival depend upon the same cycle happening again.

But this is not how we treat the word "family."

When it comes to raising a child, nobody has the answers because there is no definitive answer to how this task will unfold. By default, one is forced to call out the necessary gestures for the flow of direction to manifest clearly across reality.

We approach this question in a performative manner. Parents often apply "how they were raised" tactics and even provide the child with things they never had, attempting to enhance the duties and tasks that must reach fruition. This is a common approach for many parents, and yet, the root of the approach is entirely the same as the quest for discovering oneself—only diluted into the present, where another creature who holds more significance than yourself requires total commitment and time.

The parent is tasked with the mission to raise a child, all while still facing the personal task of raising themselves. And so, when one looks upon the child, one treats the child as one understands how to treat oneself. From an outward perspective, the parent must obtain some common-grounded theory on how to preserve and maintain the child during its feeble insufficiencies and finite grasp on possible functions. This assertion is rather complemented by an out-of-body experience where the parent must live within the child's spatial awareness as if living inside the child's body.

This is the topic of infantile possibility, a topic for another occasion.

As born from complete strangers, first secured under a projected understanding of the parents' experience of surviving and enduring the world from their shared experiences, it can also be understood that we have a nature to extract meaning from something that will always happen prior to ourselves painting over it selfishly.

There are many cases of strangers growing up with a family where everyone in that family accepted and welcomed the stranger as a member of their tribe. Often, they are treated identically to the offspring of the parents, despite not being connected at the DNA level. The essence of the individual 'growing up' and being raised among the family is enough for that soul to be secured under their allegiance. In its totality, some will even go so far as to donate organs to these individuals and would sacrifice their life for them, just as parents would not think twice about doing so for their children.

Likewise, in the topic of adoption, the custodians of the orphan approach this task with the altruistic desire to love another being and perform the duties that demonstrate the success of this act as if they were the child's biological parents. In this created understanding, even the orphan will refer to these strangers as 'Mother' and 'Father.'

Family As Pragmatic Discrepancy

On the surface, the term "family" is applied throughout life in a weak and simplistic manner. We seem to apply it to prioritise the equilibrium of the biological truth of our birth, extending it to those who share some stake in the same ancestral tree. This is a summary rooted in total materialism, which I use here to represent the material aspect of our psychological application for words that describe strictly physical relations. The nature of the biology of family, as a statement, is much like a nascent mind ascribing arbitrary labels to phenomena without grasping their underlying essence or significance. It is a term that leads to contradiction—it states the obvious on the surface, but as we go through life, the meaning of it this biologically wired family completely fades away.

So, we reach the point to ask: what is family? Where are its origins?

First, we claim that it is a biological necessity, but this is not the essence of the bond. Many people go through life without contact with their parents, and some even abandon their families after only a some years together. Where exactly is the nature of this bond? We believe in the rite and concrete fact of family, but as life progresses, the family's trajectory becomes corrupted, and its true unifying substance exists only as societal terminology. Yet again, we find ourselves facing an epistemological error—one spoken as if true, but occurring falsely.

Therefore, our true-born family is not as striking to our developmental life motion as it is made out to be. We shift our perspective on our ties to it, confirming that we have come from this tribe, yet that tribe may not be intact and further distance has secured the presence of our historical being with our current being. The tribe of the past may have died in our imaginations due to serious clashes of mind and life. Their ghosts are the only things we can point to and say, "This is where I came from, this is my mother and father." But like birds who abandon their offspring, we too replicate the animal's nature and understand that family is not quite as constructively real and essential as it is our terms for it surface.

It isn’t DNA that truly binds a family. DNA may connect a family on a superficial, physical level, but it is not enough to bind their spirits together. Love is the only enduring truth that sustains a family; it is not the genetic code that preserves its unity and order. To believe that DNA alone defines one's place within a family is primitive and outdated, almost pagan in its essence.

The reality of family is much more diluted and complex than we tend to acknowledge. The nature of humanity—each of us belonging to the broader tribe of a single species—expands far beyond the limited scope of blood ties. We are a tribe of one, and when we approach family from this perspective, we embark on a tribalistic journey that our evolving psyches must learn to transcend. Only by seeing ourselves as part of a greater whole can we begin to flourish—first as individuals tasked with the burdens of acceptance, commitment, and reflection, and then as beings capable of either nurturing or destroying the essence of a human life.

Inside each of us is an instinct to treat all as if they are our family, though over the years, this bond has gradually slipped away. Even within our own families, it is more accurate to say that your mother and father are more than just your mother and father; they are your comrades through the agony of the world—through the pain, joy, sadness, grief, and the commitment to suffering and rising above it.

To endure the intimate nature of the world begins first with regularly conquering suffering. In this fundamental truth of the human condition, our terminologies for things are weakly coined. It is far more authentic to view parents and family members as fellow sufferers - patients to the magnitude and unpredictability of the disease of existence. Not a sickness in the literal sense, but the essence of the human condition points to the fact that we are endurers of life. When we label things for surface-level understanding, we risk becoming careless, losing the reverence for the wonder and beauty of existence.

This broader understanding of family challenges us to move beyond the traditional, narrow conceptions and embrace a more profound, all-encompassing vision of human connection.