Togetherness

Well last night was the first time in a very long time that my entire family spent together outside of either a holiday or some sort of family crisis, alhamdullilah.

My dad loves baseball, and since we have a semi-pro team in our town, he thought it would be fun for the whole family to go. Indeed it was a great time, alhamdullilah.

I was so surprised and pleased to see how many families were also enjoying the game, alhamdullilah. I actually have a couple of philosophical topics on the whole night, but will stick with one. =)

Why does it seem so difficult for people to gather and spend time together? It becomes a huge production just to get together for anything. Unless, of course, it’s surrounding a holiday, which is pretty much a given ‘family’ time or an unexpected family emergency. I find the latter most fascinating because the excuses we so often use for not being able to get together are – I’m too busy, I have to work, etc. However, when a family emergency occurs immediately everyone’s calendar and time frees up to gather. Unbelievable!

I wonder if sometimes the family pressure is too much and thus causes us to avoid the gatherings. Or if sometimes gathering as a family causes us to revert back to our ‘roles’ in the family unit (i.e., the child/parent syndrome), and rears old unhealed wounds. I wonder if we put undo pressure on ourselves to be a certain way around the family or set unreasonable standards upon ourselves that we think everyone else expects us to be, which then leaves us wanting to avoid the whole gathering in the first place.

Whatever the situation, for me it was an incredible evening to spend time with my family without it being a holiday and wearing all our formal costumes for the event nor was it a family emergency that required us to be together. We all came on our own free will, and seemed to all equally agree it was great and to do it again, inshallah.