According to asdfing’s poll, family is the most important part of our lives.

The research took place in March and the posed question was: Which Part of your Life is more important to you? The voters had to choose between “family”, “love”, “friendship”, “job/career” and “not sure”.

36% of you told us that family is more important than love (which got 29% of the votes) and definitely more important than career (7%) and friendship (7%). A remarkable 21% went for “not sure” and, to tell you the truth, I was expecting it. Those questions are like bungee jumping; if you don’t answer them straight away, you may never answer them at all.

Let’s talk about our last choices.

Regarding friendship, Ann Richards said: “I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you.” Well, but life isn’t politics. 7% is a rather small percentage, don’t you think? Only 7% of us believe that friendship is the most important part of our lives…why are we disappointed by other people? Is trust gone for good? Do we really believe that only few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back? Anyway, let me be more romantic on that. I think we shouldn’t consider our friends as possible foes. And let me encourage you to always meet new people. Because, what we seem to forget about friendship can be summed up in the following phrase: “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

Regarding careers, although many of us claim that our jobs are the center of our lives and although most of us spend at least 8 hours/day at work, we know where to draw the line. Yes, career is important; but it is not the most important thing in the world. I am glad we know that. The small percentage (7%) of people that voted “job/career” as the most important part of their lives confirms it.

Regarding love…love…love…what can I say about love that hasn’t been already said? All those poems, all those songs, all those articles, all those movies about love…I feel like there is no space left for me to speak about love. Just look up the word “love” on the Internet and you will have 2.18 billion results! And yet, love is not that important as family, according to our study. When I first saw the results of our study, I thought to myself; is family more important than love? Is it really? I mean, we talk about broken hearts all day long; we are worried about that new guy we met yesterday but we are already in love; we hear love-confessions on the radio and we read about love-crimes in the newspapers. If love was a refreshment, it will be coca-cola while family is…just water.

In other words, family is just… life. The result of our research started to make sense. I closed my eyes and I tried to think of my life. I was born to a family of four. All the happy moments of my childhood smell like pancakes. I can remember playing with my sister and my cousins until sun down. I can also remember when I wished never to grow up. Now, I think of my parent’s house and my hometown as the perfect place to find peace whenever I need to. I also know that I am still part of this family and I’ll always be, even when I’ll have my own family some day. In the meantime, I believe that there are many types of families. I could say that a family is the place you return every night and the people you say goodnight and good morning to. Nothing else matters. As they say:”I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he is rich.”