If one were to heed the science behind the Enneagram, one would swiftly conclude that life on an individual level amounts to creating a character based on a problem you’re trying to solve or a fear you’re trying to smother. In colloquial terms, we all have bulls***, and all of it is necessary whether we like it or not. In the case of families, this penchant for absurdity mutates to an unthinkable degree.
Indeed, sometimes your family just doesn’t get you because your individual nonsense doesn’t gel particularly well with their collective bulls***. The worst thing a family can do about this is let it go unaddressed, but the second worst thing is probably kicking someone out of some extension of this unit without so much as an explanation. Such was the plight of TikTok‘s @haydenbegley.
In the 55-second video, Hayden consults the denizens of the internet AITA style, asking if she was in the wrong for doing the following: Hayden’s teenage niece was due to visit Los Angeles earlier this month, and her brother hit up the family group chat asking if there were any events that the family could maybe bring her along to so that she’d have stuff to do. Hayden pitched a list consisting of “DJ Kush Daddy’s Snot Lounge set,” the farmers market, The Guns & Knives Festival, and a Rockefeller-Getty warehouse party hosted by her friend Tim, the last of which Hayden jokes will need proof from her niece that she isn’t a cop, given Tim’s hatred of the police.
Mom goes “You’re joking, right Hayden?” Hayden goes “No, he really hates cops.” And just like that, Hayden is unceremoniously severed from the group chat.
Now, in case this isn’t gobsmackingly apparent to you, Hayden was indulging in some comedy by offering to bring her 15-year-old niece to a lounge, an abandoned warehouse party, and The (not a, The, with a capital T) Guns & Knives Festival. Her family, unfortunately, missed the memo, and now Hayden is down a pretty key group chat in her life.
Of course, it probably didn’t take long for her to be invited back in, as this is far from something to hold a grudge over. But, if it were the case that Hayden actually did invite all of these grudges and plunged the family into perpetual infighting, I Am Second‘s Doug Bender suggests healing by offering confessions instead of forgiveness (which allows you to take responsibility for your role in the conflict), finding time to be together, and focusing on the future instead of the past.
Because, at the risk of sounding cliché, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, so you might as well play your part in making those relationships as enriching as possible. And maybe, just maybe, Hayden should know better than to whip out such taboos as a farmers market visit; you just don’t joke about something that serious.