Sometimes I wonder if it’s just my darn luck, that my family happens to have to struggle with a bevy of issues. I wonder about my future family, whether it would be plagued by the same blight, and it makes me just…turned off by the idea of starting a family.

You get to pick and choose your friends, but “you don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them”. You get to mix with likeminded friends, but family members are often totally worlds apart in terms of thinking. And you’re often forced to live in close quarters. Familiarity really does breed contempt, loads of it in fact. So is domestic dissent and disharmony inevitable?

Take my father. If I stay with him for just a few minutes I will inevitably find some small action that will annoy me to no end. I don’t hate and loathe him, but I just can’t stand the proximity sometimes.

I rationalize this by believing that all of these annoyances are meant to mold me as a person. Yeah right..

But I really could work on my EQ a little more. Like today, when he got on my nerves again, I held my cool. It was hard work though. A little bit of distance and fresh air helps lots. And of course, it’s humbling that I have my own set of shortcomings as well. To my dismay I still share certain traits of his, although I may try hard not to be like him. (Gotta hate the louya genes!) I often look down on his ways as stupid and low-class, like I am somehow smarter and more high-class than him (yes I do think so most of the time). But when I see the same bickering going on between my cousin and her father (she’s a little more vocal about it), I feel a tiny prick of shame.

Perhaps I’m just a little bit spoiled.

I rationalise/comfort myself with the thought that perhaps all the families out there, are struggling with their own issues that I don’t know of. Even those well-to-do families and the happy-go-lucky types would still have their painful struggles. They should, unless the world is unfair. I should be grateful for what I have.

A colleague once told me that her parents never quarreled, scolded nor beat her before. She grew up not to be a spoilt brat. Utterly unthinkable, impossible, I thought.

The world is memang unfair..