My Life on Togetherness Essays -- family, parents, religion, freedom

I belong to a family that is characterized by being quite Post-modern. Talking about my parents, they do both participate in the public sphere. They both work in two separate domains, having consequently more freedom in the public sphere they encounter as a daily basis. For example, my mother works as a teacher, so she comes across mostly teachers and professors, and my father works as an architect, so he encounters mostly architects, without corrupting one another by endless phone calls or whatever. So Togetherness, which is the opposite of autonomy, is not really seen. What I described before is how things go between my parents, but I did not yet talk about the situation between my parents and us, their children. Our freedom grows proportionally with our age. When we were young, we weren't restricted to communicate only to the family members. In school, we were free to meet and talk to whoever we want. Of course they do warn us of the bad persons we might encounter, but we were feeling comfortable. As we grew up, the relationship between us start to be friendlier. Trust is there, which I believe is one of the most important criteria that should exist within a relationship, happiness is there, everything is fine. However, a criterion of togetherness was missing, which is the freedom of choice. Choices available to me were those that my parents provided me with. For example, one of my goals in my Life was, and still is, to become a Formula 1 racing driver, but unfortunately I wasn't able to achieve that, because my parents simply weren't able to assimilate the idea that I drive a "dangerous", fast car. I know it's too late now, but my dream is still to drive a Formula 1 car, at least before I pass away. Anyway, my family is the ... ...rnal or external. when everything's ticking along just fine, I don't think most people give much thought to it; evidence of that can be found in the confusion with which most people will respond to questions like, "what makes someone a man/woman?", or, "how do you know that you're a woman/man?", without referring to biology. But as soon as something's not quite right, whether that's an internal feeling of incongruence or an external challenge to one's gender, suddenly it becomes very important indeed. Finally it does work for me, and I am not emphasizing any counter ideas toward girls. I don't have any problem with them; each of us is different at several levels. I can have positive criteria by being a boy and my sister, for example, can also have positive criteria that I do not have by being a girl. I was born a male; I will grow as a male, and will die as a male.