Nov 21
Guest post: Family, by Kurt Vonnegut
FAMILY Kurt Vonnegut
This was sent to me by Norman Chancer, a dear friend, whose sense of humour is very similar to that of Vonnegut’s.
“Okay, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”
A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.
* * * *
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or handsome it was.
Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?”
November 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I must confess I do like writing these comments. I have just read the above passage, and found it to be amusing, whilst at the same time sad. Why sad? Sad that we need so many other people to make our lives function. Sad that we are not enough in ourselves. Even when we seek out a lover – we are not enough. Sad because at one time in our life, we were the center of all the attention. As the years pass by, that focus is then shifted to the next generation, and for some of us, even further than that.
I worked for a short while in an elderly people’s home, and was surprised to see just how few times those old people were visited by their closest family. Some were visited as little as twice a year. Your extended family, as is mentioned, is something you can be born with or that can be created from choice. Or, you can simply look within to discover all that exists, that will ever be needed, such as love, joy, fulfillment, tears and happiness, reside within you. Nothing like this exists outside of yourself. Your extended family exists for everyone, all you have to do is surrender to it.