Family

The importance of family can never be under-estimated. It is always your family that is there to bail you out, may be not in the ways you had imagined, but there all the same! At least this is how it is in my family. It might be a little cliche but nevertheless true that 'blood is thicker than water'. I am fortunate to have had such a stable family upbringing but as you move out on your own and form your own family the pressure is always on to create that which you have just left and enjoyed before.

From a really young age I was always certain that I would never get married, not so certain that I would not have kids (different culture where these sorts of things are not frowned upon as much as in other cultures, depending on who you ask of course!), but could never really see myself being able to duplicate the success that my parent's marriage and finding safety in the desire not to try. It has been 40 years since they took the plunge into wedded bliss.

Despite this insistence on never getting married, the marriage thing sort of creeps up on you. Not only what some societies expect is the proper marriageable age but what your family wants for you as well. When it is all said and done my family is conservative in their ideas of family and marriage. Yet, accepting of all whatever their individual circumstances might be.

I did try and delay it as long as possible and did the dating thing for more than seven years before taking that fateful plunge into wedded bliss. Five years and still going is a bit of an achievement in and of itself for a bloke who was never going to tie the knot! Marriage is much harder than one can imagine as you try and merge two individuals into one married couple. Persistence and patience are the keys to getting it right along with always seeing the big picture. But it is the challenge that makes it fun!

I am sure there are plenty of reasons for families to come apart at the seams but there are always good reasons for putting in the hard yards and trying to make things work.

The purpose of this blog entry is just me pondering about where I am today and the importance of family in getting me to this point. The picture is of my folks and my better half and wife (aka Neng) in Phuket earlier this year.