“Nothing else matters so much as long as you can come home and be with your family.” — Patrick Dempsey
Humans are social creatures and we need a strong support network to navigate the world. Your family is a built-in support network ready to draw from when you need it. Your siblings are your first best friends. Your parents are the safe space you run to after you scrape your knees, get a bad grade, experience the loss of your first love, or miss out on your first-choice college.
If you zoom out slightly and include extended family, your cousins might be the best friends you needed, your aunts and uncles serving as extra parents to turn to in your times of need. Then, you reach adulthood and you build a family unit of your own. The original ties don’t go away, you just extend them.
It’s easy to take your family for granted because no matter what’s going on, they’re always there when you get home after a long day. They’re a constant. You know you can rely on them so when push comes to shove, you funnel your energy and focus into work and your family suffers as a result.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to change your perspective, but I don’t want that for you. I want you to realize how important your family is without having to suffer a loss to figure it out. Family first, nothing else really matters.