One Happy Family (天伦之乐)

 There's a phrase in the Chinese language roughly translated as "heavenly joy," referring to the happiness when a family is all united again. One of the fundamental appeals of the Chinese nuclear family concept, and one that is shared in most cultures, even in America (see Fast and Furious movies, 1-9) even though concepts of "modern family" and new age family alter the traditional definition somewhat. Indeed, I am pretty lucky to have been raised in a 2-parent household (as did MJ, who is with her family now in Korea!) and may of my conceptions of family and happiness and being together with other people stems from my childhood of all staying under one roof, even if it was a dirty roof with cramped rooms while I slept in the same room as my grnadfather and woke up with a ton of mosquito bites. Not everyone gets to have that, and some go through life in need of father/mother/parent figures. I especially feel sympathy for those in the LGBT community who are outcasted from their family because of their sexual orientation and unwillingness of their families to accept them for who they are. I think it might be important to look at the bigger picture, that LGBT people are not willingly trying to betray their families and likely need their family more than ever when dealing with difficult personal issues. 

I guess my idea of family carries through to who I like to hang out with. Whereas MJ likes to do one-on-one meet-ups with friends for intimate conversations (the Joe Rogan podcast form), I actually prefer the large friend outing where the group goes out together and form relationships with each and every member of the group, embracing each other's similarities and differences. For example, last night I went out to an annual gathering of our USC Law fantasy baseball league to the Dodger-Giants game (a crowd 52,000 people, showing how motivated people to get out there after the pandemic). This was the 10-year anniversary of us all graduating from USC Law, but we stayed connected through baseball even though everyone lives in different parts of the world, people are brannching off and starting their own families (babies!). Even with some minor disagreements over the years and various idiosyncracies (I am considered the "AirbnBobby" of the group due to my nomadic behavior), it was good to connect with that particular group of people, just one of the families we all belong to. 

MJ often asks me why I want to have child(ren), and it's not an easy answer: I am aware of the downsides of having a baby: loss of sleep, loss of free time, enormous cost over the lifespan of the child. I often have to explain with vague concepts of "love," "I've always wanted to have children," "I worked well with children," "I want to continue the family tradition," "I want to have more people in my life that I adore and trust as much as you, MJ baby!" and "we will make a very healthy, happy, and smart baby because of who we are" (of course, not necessarily but I am optimistic) but I think of the driving factors is that I grew up in a loving family that made me want the same thing when I grrew up. I can definitely envision children of broken families seeing the sadness of divorce and feeling their love divided, so I get why people might hesitate. Also, the longer MJ and I are together, the longer it seems likely we will stay together forever to build our family, so bit by bit MJ is buying into the program. It probably doesn't hurt that I show her pictures of all my friends and relatives having babies (that's the trick, right?) 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan