TOW: A Family of friends

I've been thinking a lot about what makes people happy in general.

After having a long period of time away with my family, I realized that whenever I have been really happy in life, I have always managed to have a family of friends to rely on.

It seems to me that what really matters in life is the size and quality of your social structure.  And that quality can be evaluated based on how 'familial' your friends are.  Yes, some of them are like the cousin you never wish you had, but on the other hand, we love people in spite of their flaws.  (Indeed, sometimes it's people flaws that make them charming, not their better qualities.)

As I get a bit older now, and live so far away from my family, I'm starting to see the benefit, as well as the peril, of living with/out a family that I've created.  Having good friends in my life has always been integral to me saying that I'm successful as a person.  And, I have some really great friends (although, granted, not all of them live in one place).

I was looking for statistics on the 'new' style of blended families, which is to say, families of your own choosing, but they're far and few between. I have seen them in the past, but I can't seem to pull up anything now.  But I remember it being that said that a healthy social life created a kind of family between people of different groups and backgrounds based on a need to have a social 'grounding' so to speak.  And this grounding in group of people with different roles creates stability in a life where there might be less stability.

It's a good feeling to feel 'safe' because you're surrounded by people that can fill the roles of uncle, spouse, brother, sister, father/mother in some cases.  And those roles really matter because we still judge our 'other' societal relations based on our contact or need to attend events with our 'family' whether chosen or blood-related.  In reality, we all have to 'choose' our family--to love them or hate them, to trust them or distant ourselves from them.  But good family members will always be there for us, even if it isn't always quite in the way we expect.