I live in a kind of 'troublesome' neighborhood. Why do I say that? How dare?! Because that's what I see and hear every day. Bad words, strong intonation in having a conversation, rude acts, cries, or even screams. Those things are directed to their family members. Not only the left and the right side, but also other two houses on the next of those two houses. Confused enough? Hm. Just imagine that there are five houses in a neighborhood, mine is in the middle, and the other four houses have a very different kind of culture.
I'm sorry that I'm saying that they are troublesome. Okay, this is a disclaimer. I don't say that they fail to rise their children to have good attitudes because, yea, every family has their own way and culture to do it. I only want to say that I'm really thankful, really grateful to be raised in this family. Every family has their own problems and I won't say that my family has no problems. We have it too, but at least, we don't disturb our neighbors with shouts, or broken plates and glasses, or thrown pans and spoon.
I'll focus on how grateful I am to be in this family. My mom is a very strict person especially in the term of neatness. She won't let the living room is full of unnecessary things. She's a neat freak. However, I'm really thankful about that, because every time I compare my house to other houses I've visited, I always think about how my mom taught me to have my house neat.
I'm also grateful to my dad. He wasn't do anything bad, like cursing in front of his children with bad words, or doing violence physically and verbally. He was a smoker, but after knowing that I had asthma, he didn't smoke in the house. His words weren't bad and his intonation wasn't strong and high, but the words he said with the right intonation were meant a lot.
My younger brother. Although I don't know whether he ever had jealousy to me since I'm the first born, I know that he works a lot to manage his emotion. He had been through quite complicated things when my dad was sick. At that time, my mom had to work, I wasn't in the house since I had to finish my study, and he's a last year senior high student. He had to do many things. And he chose to be a really good son who took care of his paralyzed dad. I learned a lot from him.
We ever shouted each other, got angry in many situation, felt disappointed to one another, but I'm grateful that I'm raised in a family who taught me how to be neat (in dressing and in tidying up the house) and to be wise (in managing anger, emotion, and words). I really want to spread this, because I ever felt disappointed with my family before. I ever thought about why I should be in this family, why I was born in this family, why my family cannot get better financial condition, even I thought whether I really belong to this family or not. And after I thought about it many times, compared my life in my family to my neighbors, I think I should be more grateful of the life that I have now.
It's not always good if we compared our life to others. I don't know the real journeys of my neighbors. I don't want to know about it. I only have such an observation about their daily communication style. I can't analyze it further because I don't want to get into their life, so, yea, here I am. Being grateful of what I have now. Taking all the good things and tried to get rid of toxic things. And if I have to fix something, I'll do it in my family.
Thanks, Raymonds. I won't be this thoughtful and thankful if I'm not here.
