by Keith Worth

Created on: August 13, 2008   Last Updated: September 10, 2011

                Blood, is a messy matter. Blood can stain everything it touches; leaving testimony to its presence for years after it is cleaned up. The scarlet stream is best left unseen, and seldom thought of in a positive light. We need it to survive, but that does little to change the fact that it is a gruesome necessity.  Some might go as far as saying the same about family. Water on the other hand, is clear and cleansing. Being surrounded by or immersed in water is often a pleasant experience and it is less likely to leave a visible mess. In that respect, water is like the friends we choose.

            Blood is thicker than water, or so the obscenely popular saying dictates. But what exactly does that trivial fact mean? Is blood everything? The answer is yes only if you are a vampire, but the cardiac mercury is rarely so straightforward for many of the mere mortal population. In a strictly objective world, it is undeniable that blood is physically thicker than water but following the same train of thought, a cinder block is thicker still. In a world gone cynical, how exactly does the relative thickness of anything warrant consideration outside of the bedroom or construction industry? For instance, it is a common saying that families share common blood, or blood ties to borrow a cliché, yet my blood type happens to match millions of strangers. Does that mean I share ties with every person with A positive flowing through their veins? In my experience, it is not blood that binds us, an expression that sounds more like an obligation than anything else, but love.

            Just as maternal instincts spring from compassion and love as opposed to duty and obligation, I feel the sanctity of family revolves not around the niceties of genetics but the emotional bond that it is impossible to force. A mother bears rears up to defend her cubs not out of reluctant responsibility but out of loyalty and devotion of her brood, proof even on the most primitive level that blood in truth means very little. In fact, the very concept of adoption refutes the inflated importance of blood. Sometimes the person who can offer the most love to someone else has no biological linkage. A selfish young mother may be unable to feel compassion for the animate product of her actions, proving

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