LIFE LESSONS FROM OUR SIBLINGS

Only Age and Time Can Show Us What We Learned

The New York Times recently published an article by Susan Dominus, a staff writer for T magazine, entitled “The Surprising Ways That Siblings Shape Our Lives.”

The author wrote about how, at 14, she spent most of her time doing the two things she loved most, running and playing the piano, although at the time it had already become clear she would excel at neither. That year, when her brother, who was six years her senior, came home from college, he told her she should join the high school newspaper. She told him there was no longer one. It had withered away due to a lack of interest.

Her brother then lectured her about how democracy would wither away too without a free press and journalists keeping everyone honest. She restarted the high school newspaper and became a professional journalist.

I had a similar experience. I was at university in England in my second year with two to go. I had gone to read law, but one term of torts and contracts was quite enough for me, thank you very much, and I was studying classics and French. My eldest sister, Susie, had just moved to Los Angeles and called several times, urging me to do the same.

“Sara’s moved to Northern California,” she said. “You come, too. Let’s all be together.”

“But I’m in the middle of a college degree,” I said. “Next year is my year abroad in Strasbourg. All that work will be wasted. And I’ll be behind two years.”

“You just transfer your credits,” she said.

“But what am I going to study over there?” I said.

There was a short silence. Then, Susie said, “Why don’t you study journalism? You’ve always been good at writing.”

I had?

We often learn what we’re good at by people telling us what we’re good at, and often from our siblings, who are our earliest, closest and longest-lasting relationships.

It had never occurred to me that I should pursue a writing career, even though certain teachers at school had indeed complimented me on my writing. Yet as soon as my sister said those words, my stomach lurched, and an electrical pulse coursed through me. The idea sounded so exotic and exciting. I wondered if it had lain dormant in me until Susie brought it alive. I’m so grateful she said what she said when I was 19. And I’m so grateful I listened. Susie was teaching me about myself.

We return to instances like these as we age – fanning through our life mentally, its inflection points, its pivots, and who or what triggered them. It’s only time that gives us that deep, wide, long perspective. And we realize our relationships with our siblings play a powerful part in who we become. We leave deep imprints on them, and they on us. We may be different from each other, but siblings around the same age with whom you grow up and experience much of the same life, really know you. They see you in ways you never see yourself.

Neither Susie nor Sara knows everything about me, nor I about them. But they can shine the light brighter than most – and how illuminating that can be.