familia F

in my psychology of family relations class, we took up the systems theory. essentially, it looks at the family as a system made up of different parts or sub-systems, and functioning as a whole. there are all sorts of subsystems like the spousal pair, or the children together, or this parent and that child, or this parent and two children, etc. you have to consider all the parts or the members of the family in the light of the entire family system. always the part in light of the whole for the whole is greater than the parts.

also, any stresses or changes affects the system as a whole, affects its equilibrium. when the system is upset (thru normal family transitions like births, deaths, children going to school, etc), the equilibrium is disturbed. however, the system will always seek to find its new equilibrium.

last week, i realized the perfect example of the family as a system, and i don't mean my gang of t's and g's. rather, i mean the f's :D. there was this parangal ek for the ex-officers of my ex-office/ organization. let's call my colleagues, cohorts, comrades and co-witches at my ex-org, the F's. at the beginning of the night, i felt a bit sad that no one among the F's dared speak/ give a testimonial about our mother F. i mean more than anyone else (people from the F board and the F network), it would be testimonials from the F family members that would mean the most or would hold the most truth. but no one would.

i myself wanted to but did not want to. hehehe. i only wanted to speak if ten other family members also spoke in turn. this because i didn't want to humiliate myself (wahehehe), and also because i felt i could only give a small part of the entire picture, and the best would be if all the other parts of the puzzle showed themselves too so i would be "in context" and the picture would be "fair." i also did not feel like i could represent the others or speak for them, i could only share of myself and my experience, and my lessons and my growth :).

luckily for everyone, and easing the potential heartbreak of it all, co-host for the night joannie took up the challenge, gathered her emotions together, and spoke up, for herself, and really, for the staff, the F's. oh chester, thank you :) you couldn't have said it better, i think. thank you for saying no one wanted to speak up because it didn't seem like the right venue for it (somehow, the matter of sg F seemed too intimate and too private to us all, needing a more appropriate--safer-- space and venue). and also for explaining the family metaphor, you gave the overall picture of what we are, who we were together, for so many many years.

indeed we were a family in our complexity, and in our chaos. in our fun, in our pain. and the inescapable fact of mother f. it seems somehow, in retrospect, that she defined that world for us, taught us how to perceive it, how to analyze it, how to live in it, how to strategize, how to tacticize. we knew the world thru her, like how newborn babies conceive of the world thru their primary caregiver.

there was also no getting around her. she was our friend and our boss, the enemy and the beloved parent combined. we liked her and loved her, we were in awe of her, and often disliked her intensely. often, she was helpful, was also loving, also neglectful, and a challenge to relate to. but she was ever-present even in her absence.

we all related to her in various ways, and like a family we existed in various sub-systems, including our respective sub-systems with her.

and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. and it seems an injustice to take on the whole from simply the perspective of a part or several parts. our experience and our life together was one entire reality, that only those of us who were really there could really understand.

and so here we are at the parties, and other events, catching up with that family, and those parts of our selves.