Home sweet home

  “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere Home, home, sweet, sweet home There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home.”   

 Above phrase is a part from a song called “Home, sweet home.” The lyric was written by John Hward Payne and music was later added by H.R. Bishop. People seek for a home where they can receive healing and rest. Today, I wonder how many people really have such “home.” 

  During my college year, I took an extracurricular class which lectured on family. The lecture wasn’t exactly exciting…I felt the theories were not agreeable. I didn’t realize back then, but after many years, I came to understand the reason behind my discomfort toward the lectures. It was the tone and view of the lecturer when he spoke about family. He described a family in a very inorganic way.  His definition of “family” was a mere living space for a group of people who are tied and ruled by family centrism and paternalism. He also talked about how the traditional family structure transformed into today’s modern and democratic family style during drastic industrialization after the WWII.
 For a young, unmarried student who was dreaming about a lovely sweet home, the lecture felt very dry and tasteless, and the lecture remains as a bitter memory of my college life.    We easily judge our family with our personal measurement of good and bad.
Some praise family to be as an ideal heaven on earth, and some criticize family as living hell filled with stress and oppression. Many researchers also make different claims depending on their perspectives. Then, what should we do when it comes to making one’s family among all these opposing theories and opinions?

  How can we learn and understand the actual functions and desirable state of a family in our society? Young, unmarried people may tend to have an idealistic and limited view on a family due to lack of experiences. As you get older, you may come across various experiences that can expand your viewpoints and become more tolerant to different ideas of family. Both young and old have their strength and weakness. Thus it would be the wisest choice to study both perspectives and utilize them.

   Current effort of the Korean government to initiate “Healthy Family” movement can been seen as a part of such effort. Some people says it’s another political tactic for our government to evade their public responsibility by making a division between “healthy” and “unhealthy” families. However, the true goal of a healthy family movement is not about the external environment but, to build internal health and prevention measures to seek the balance among individual, family, and society.

  We say a family is space of happiness and blessing. Then today how do we treat our families? Often we use the word “family” for a basic unit of society. Society can be truly healthy and successful when the basic units are healthy and co-exist in harmony. Are we doing well in making healthy, peaceful families in our society?      Someone said “A family is like a tree. It has to be nurtured until maturity”.
There is truth in this word. No family is perfect from the beginning; it should be raised, guided, and cared to become a healthy self-standing family.  The Chinese character for the word family [家庭] means a house with a garden.
Let’s make our own beautiful garden called the family together where everyone can have a place to heal, rest and live in joy.