I Believe....

I believe that family is the most important thing in the world. When you're

growing up, the first example of what it is to be a man or a woman comes from your

father or mother. Your parents teach you right from wrong. They teach you what

responsibility is. They teach you that hard work is important. They teach you how to

be polite, and act right in public. They teach you how to treat women, and how

women behave, if you are a boy, or how to treat men, and how men behave, if you

are a girl.

The next example on how to be a man or woman comes from your grandparents.

They teach you to respect the intelligence and wisdom of the old. They teach you to

listen, and to think about what you have heard. They teach you that sometimes the

old ways are the best ways. They teach you to find value in things that last the test of

time. They teach you that quality is better than quantity.

The third example of how to be a man is if you are lucky enough to have a brother.

That person teaches you the most important lessons you can learn. He teaches you

what it is to have a partner in crime. He teaches you what it is to be admired. He

teaches you what it is to be a role model. He teaches you how to fight. Then he

teaches you how to forgive. He teaches you that sometimes someone else can know

you better than you know yourself. He teaches you to protect someone, even if it

means that it's to your death.

If you lose your brother, parents, or grandparents, it teaches you how to grieve your loss 

with every part of you. It teaches you how to recover from that great loss, but

never to forget the lessons that person taught you. It teaches you that every memory,

good or bad, can be a treasure if someone you love is a part of it.

Nothing is more important than family. Your family shapes the person you grow up

into. And who you become, who you are, when you become a parent, is the reason

that family is the most important thing in the world. Because all of that influence has

prepared you for the closest, most loved, and most influential person in your family.

Your child. And when you first look at your daughter's face, she makes you

understand that everything your parents, grandparents, and your brother helped you to

learn and discover about yourself was all for this. To be a parent. To pass along all of

your experience to your little girl. To help her grow as a person and discover the world

not just like you did, but better than you did. And then, when she is old enough to

understand, you tell her how important family is. You see to it that she knows her

grandparents, her uncle, and her great-grandparents too if you are lucky. And if you

are not lucky, and you have lost one of these amazing people along the way, you

make sure that she at least can know them through your eyes, and memories.