When It doesn't Feel Like Family

I don't know about other parts of the world, I can't really speak for them, but I do know that in Africa, particularly Nigeria, we are taught that family is everything. From birth to adulthood, we are subconsciously and at some point consciously taught that family matters more than anything there is. This is one of the main reason for the lack of patriotism and national spirit in most Africa countries as people's allegiances are directed at subunits in the nation.

Having been taught over year that family comes first, we learn to put the interest of the family over that of even the nation, and this is also reflected in the dominance of transmission tendencies amongst Africans, as we tend to consider members of the same ethnic group as us, to be our extended family, hence the affairs and interest of our 'ethnic group' seem to matter to us by far, more than that of our country.

Having been brought up with such indoctrination, we tend to be quite sentimental and over protective even when it has to do with our family. This dates far back to the earliest days of the Africa continent when the problem of one was the problem of all. For example, if somebody B, was to kill a member of the family of a certain man A, the entire family, community and ethnic group of man A will be out to draw blood in revenge for the injustice done to man A. In the times of old, this was actually what was responsible for most of the supposed killings which the greedy and destructive Europeans used as an excuse for most of the military and political actions they undertook during the colonial era.

Now, the issue is, in a society where we put family above all, where we love the company of family, where everything has added value when there's family, the slightest deviation from this way of life is considered seriously unacceptable.

The thing is I know for a fact, that there are people who feels like the worst thing you can do to them, is have them spend time with their family. These kind of people usually fulfill all their obligations by family standards, all except for the emotional part. While they are okay doing everything that's expected of them as members of their families, they just don't see anything special in it. To them, it might as well have been with any stranger on the road.

You might want to argue that they don't exist, but they do, and quite a lot of them. They are just very good at concealing it for the free of what society would think of them. These kind of people tend to feel this void where there's supposed to be familial emotions.

They seem to lack emotional attachment to their family or the ability to feel that attachment. These people usually feel more at home when they are away from their families rather than with them. To this group of folks, 'Family never really feels like family'.

I've been wondering what could be the possible cause of this whole emotional 'confusion', I still haven't figured it out. I mean, it could be that they just don't know how to feel emotions or attachments towards anyone at all, but is that even possible? Or maybe it all started as a malice or conflict left unattended and allowed to fester into emotional indifference.

This article is not meant to educate you, it's meant to help me find answers, and hopefully we all learn from it. I really would like to know of your opinion or theory about it in the comment section.

Forgive my rambling, I had quite a 'busy' and tiring day. I'm trying to rest now and I'm really sleepy. I hope your day was good and you were among those whom were lucky enough to get presents to unbox today.

Thanks for reading though. Special thanks to all you fans, the readers, commmenters, upvoters, subscribers and sponsors, I really appreciate you guys and all your support.