FAMILY: A DEFENCE MECHANISM AS WELL AS AN OBSTACLE TO RADICAL CHANGES!

«Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.»

-Leo Tolstoy

It is very easy to recognize others’ mistakes, to criticize these mistakes, hide behind them, underestimating or covering the ones that we are to blame!

How ready are to recognize our mistakes and prioritize the change which is going to start from our “footprint”?
The personal, professional, social, family life or whichever social role we adopt and fulfill each day, carving forward and being a role model for other people around us!

The family institution has always been a powerful defense mechanism, a bastion of morality and values (different from family to family, but always a primary pillar of untold principles), a tool for social cohesion, which holds in any situation of erosion and corruption and calls for deviation from the straight line!
The school, friends and other social integrations (sports – cultural associations, etc.) are certainly complementary roles, very important indeed, but it is impossible to lead and make a substitute for a family.
Every time when a stimulus, an occasion or a “temptation”, tend to induce someone to cast ashore, family is the one who would exercise its primary informal enforcement by “smacking” the influenced part and “grasping it by the ear” so as to lead it back on track!

However, what happens when we have become the enemy?

Examining the impact of the deterioration in all sectors, which the whirlwind of the modern Greek pathogenicity brought, it won’t be difficult to recognize corruption and deviation, even in the structure and function of a family.
The path of virtue is not always the one which the modern family suggests as a model, to its young members; having a domino effect … and this never stops.

So today, unwittingly, as leaders of families which nurture new members, we have already eroded minds, even if we do not admit it; we are not always integers and rigorous. Not the role models.
Going a step further ahead, I would say that the modern family, while it is still a limiting factor for everyday corruption (drugs, drink, bad company, etc), indicating always the “right thing to do”, this right thing is not identical to what we stand for our childrens’ future. In fact, this is a powerful obstacle for the radical changes which have to be made. Strong barrier, because the family lost neither its role nor its influence, and nothing yet substituted its institutional tasks.

The new members, our children, are those who can change the course of history and evolution for the Greek society.
We are the ones who ask for changes and we are being directed by the efforts of change, to contribute to a substantial shift; focusing on how to shield and properly equip our children, the leaders (business, politics, professionals, family men, friends, etc) of 2030 who will have the tools to build the world they deserve, on their own.
However, while schools will teach our children ways to make a leap into the future, their own families, as an active part of the pathogenesis, will reacts vigorously, whipping out values and visions, providing moral standards which we want to make obsolete …!
We need to overcome ourselves, to leave the routine of our lives and look forward to the ways through which, our actions will inspire the new generations to claim something better!
If our children see us not to toss away from the car window our litters, when moving in the highway; they would consider it unthinkable for themselves to adopt such a behavior. Every day they are setting up their characters by watching their role models (us).

It is certain that there is something that we did not do the right way today and we have to have the courage to admit it!

If we dare, we will change it!

Do we have the strength needed, to recognize the things which are wrong in our own homes?

Constantinos Mitropapas