You know what I find most hilarious in the whole wide world? My paternal grandmother going on about ‘love’. I don’t know if this is the case in other countries, but the mantra most frequently cited amongst Korean Christians is, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity’, from the Bible. Now, in its Korean version, ‘charity’ is simply translated as ‘love’. And my grandmother, as a(n overly) pious Christian, is the biggest advocate of this ‘love’. It’s funny because, as I said before, I’ve never experienced any form of love or affection from her, just dogged dictates to go to church and tithe (and of course get married off). That is to say, I’ve never met a more hypocritical person than my own grandmother (and grandfather for that matter). What’s also funny is that, if ‘charity’ in that mantra literally meant charity rather than love of humankind, she would still be a big-time hypocrite. Think about it, charity means ‘the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need’. The point here is ‘to those in need’. She wouldn’t spare a penny for her own granddaughter in need of financial help but would readily donate a fortune to some fat, rich church. I really don’t get it, but there it is. Just my luck to have loveless, ungenerous grandparents.
Most people would grin and bear unpleasantries from family members because, well, they’re family. You can’t just go about burning bridges with them, can you? But I’m the kind of person who’s simply unable to put up with the people or things I dislike. And I do not have any intention to forgive and rebuild a bridge with my grandparents. I’m the granddaughter and they’re the grandparents—why would I try to be the bigger person when they’ve been so very small-minded to me? They will never change, which means there’ll always be a lot of talk about love (in a religious context, of course) but never the actual act of it. I believe that love is not something to preach but practise. I’ve struggled all my life with my inability to love and be loved (wonder where that came from, eh?). I’d much rather spend my time and energy building new bridges with the people from whom I can learn to love and be loved than put up with hypocrites just because I’m related to them by blood.
My paternal relatives have never felt like family to me and, after the whole granny crisis, I’m now estranged from my maternal relatives too. Maybe things will get better as time passes and they realise that granny’s irrational behaviour was caused by a disease. But I know from my observations of my parents and their siblings that, unless efforts are made from both sides, siblings can be as close as between strangers. My older aunt said to my mum during the granny crisis that the five siblings would see one another only on occasions like weddings and funerals. These words hurt my mum’s feelings, but I reckon what aunt said is true. I don’t think things can ever go back to before granny tore the relationships amongst her children into shreds. Again, I’d rather try to find people from whom I can learn to be more tolerant, understanding, forgiving, accepting and kind than grapple with family drama derived from the absence of all of the above.
I believe that family doesn’t necessarily have to be those with blood or legal ties. If you have someone you can be yourself and feel at home with, because that someone accepts and loves you for who you are, that very person is family. And you’ll be lucky to find one such person in your life. I haven’t yet found my ‘family’ in this sense, but I know what I should be doing in order to find it: learning to love myself, because only then will I be able to love somebody else and let myself be loved by them. I also know that it’ll be an excruciatingly hard task considering my loveless family legacy. After grappling with the self-love issue for decades, I still haven’t got the hang of how to go about it. But one thing is certain—I'll steer clear of loveless people, and if that means virtually burning bridges with my own family, so be it. Because life’s too short (well, 120 years isn’t exactly short, but you know what I mean) to stick around them.
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