Your parents are the first. Providers of all love and all sustenance. You imprint on their glowing goodness, their ever-present kindness. They are solicitous to your needs and wishes even if you can only express them through cries and gurgles and the occasional beaming smile. And when you are a little older and they place a few sensible limits on your behaviour, well of course you rebel and act out but even in the midst of a tantrum a part of you feels more secure due to these restrictions. Like a dog in training, you recognise and keep within the boundaries.
Yet the schism is inevitable. Your mum and dad are a disappointment to you, their lives unfulfilled, their potential undeveloped, their stamina and application questionable. They become yesterday's people. Who thinks like that nowadays? Sync with the program, dude.
You may have older siblings. Like the pendulum on a grandfather clock they will veer from one set of emotions to another. At one moment they will indulge you, treasure you, make you the little baby that is the joy of their life and you are so cute with those tiny fingers and they get down and arrange your toys for you or encourage your crawling, your walking, your social development. But at other moments they don't want to be burdened with you, you're holding them back or keeping them away from their friends and they never wanted another addition to the family, life was fine and dandy just as it was but now you've come along and spoilt everything.
The years magnify. The drift is inevitable. By the adult times you barely have contact. Maybe the regular family functions and commitments - Christmas, Eid, Diwali, Yom Kippur, whatever. The rest of the time you inhabit different galaxies and you certainly wouldn't want to be in their space sector with its burnt-out stars and fake supernovas. As the Biblical Cain said, I am not my brother's keeper. I am not responsible for the actions of my sister. In fact, I'm not even interested or involved with them.
Quite early in your life you will go to nursery or kindergarten or play school and seem to make friends with other toddlers or infants. The child psychologists have a term that pretty much nails it: parallel play. You're not actually together, you're next to each other in the same space-time continuum.
School brings a whole wealth of new apparent friends and an array of acquaintances. An older kid is kind in the playground and for a while you look up to them. You may well have a favourite teacher and you almost certainly have a favourite teaching assistant or playtime supervisor or dinner server. Hugs of recognition. They listen to all your news, the ins and outs of what happened with David's painting or how Emily is getting you all organised to prepare a singing and dancing routine for the class talent show. These may become days you look back on fondly and wish that you could recapture, a time of love and seeming certainty.
You might not have deliberately set in motion the process of killing your idols, but they will die or dissipate nonetheless. The whole situation could be seen as quite precarious all along. A parent has a job change or you get given notice to vacate where you have been housed and suddenly you have to up sticks to a different city and you will never see your buddies Nasima and Deshawne ever again. Or else, the realisation arrives that it's not you who is valued by your friend, it's the answers you give to help them with the hard maths homework. Pizza and sleepover are just as good, if not better, at Jamie's or Tanisha's house. And they've got a bigger TV or a new PlayStation or their mum lets them giggle with flashlights under the bedclothes until well past midnight and so evenings at your and your parents' place seem a bit lame by comparison. And then don't happen anymore.
Or there's the day you catch your form tutor smoking in the car park and chatting shit with Mrs Metcalfe about the stupid fucking kids and how they'll never amount to anything. Actually, your teacher says, "They'll never amount to nothing" but the irony is beyond you. Case proven.
That old Jesuit thing about give me a child for seven years and I'll mould them for life… well, the pattern's been set for sure. Secondary school, high school, college, Uni … repeat, grow a little older, repeat.
Entering the world of employment, maybe you look for the inspirational boss who will teach you on the job and help you to succeed in business or otherwise boost your chosen career. But they are actually incompetent, narcissistic, thoroughly unpleasant, absent most of time, a lech, a cougar, a pisshead, a coke head, out of touch - a dinosaur, a white collar crook, totally uninterested in your development or welfare, only doing this for the money. Tick all boxes that apply or feel free to add in further qualities within the section marked "Other".
That old office maxim: "There's no 'I' in team." Actually, there is no team, it's just a bunch of "I's" in it for themselves.
You might meet somebody or a series of somebodies. Your orbits start to coalesce. You marry or co-habit or civilly partner up. Finally, you have someone close to idolise, to trust in, to preserve at all costs. So how does it happen that somewhere not too far down the line this person whose body parts you have kissed, caressed and sucked becomes inimical? Their endearing quirks now shown in truth as intensely annoying habits. You yearn to uncouple. You are glad to be shot of them.
Maybe you'll have children. There will be a brief golden glow. But you don't need me to tell you that they are fated to follow a similar path to the one you and all the other multi-millions have trodden. Where once you were their hero, their idol, their god, so soon they will be more interested in school friends, hobbies, and anything that's new.
Ah, God. In whatever form or forms you wish to conceive him / her / it / them. In the western world, we like to think that the medieval serfs had such certainty in their belief in Church and King. Or that ancient superstitious peoples set great store by nature spirits, the sun, the seasons, the ghosts of ancestors. All these and more were high and mighty and untouchably ruling us from above. Did the Age of Enlightenment usher in the Days of Cynicism? What do you care? On a personal level, you've given up on the white-bearded old guy in the sky. Where was he when your brother had his motorcycling accident aged just eighteen? Where was he when your beloved maiden aunt - vegan, a cat lover, and volunteer at the local hospice - was struck down with non-smoking lung cancer? Where is he now for the children of Yemen?
Remember: Don't pick a historical hero. Every reputation is up for grabs and bound for the dustbin. And they are all a bunch of reprobates at best. Our finest academics on Facebook say that back in the day they should have known all these things before anyone had even spoken or contemplated these things. Ignorant fucks. Only living people matter. Now and for always.
You seek role models beyond yourself. You know that this means existing somewhat vicariously, but you cheer on a football club, obsess about a pop band, slavishly follow the goings-on of some film or Reality TV star. But then the athlete fails the drugs test, the lead guitarist gets called out in an underage sex scandal and the political and social media pronouncements of your fave celebs start to turn your stomach. They don't have a fucking clue about ordinary lives. You ditch the lot of them. Shower of shit. Influencers? Corporate puppets trying to sell you plastic pollutant fake lashes or acidic shaving gel.
You may think I'm heading towards some sort of conclusion along the lines of all you can rely upon in this life is yourself. That you have to become your own hero or idol or god. Stuff and nonsense. Every day I disappoint myself. Every mirror just reflects my continuing failure. I'm really not making any sort of lasting mark on the world. If you've read this far, I'll ask you this simple question: Which regular "Sein" contributor is writing this? Is it B. Drew Collier? Rachel Rodman? Mark Howard Jones? None of these - maybe you'll have to scroll back up to the top of the page to check my by-line.
All the gods and goddesses are dead. The statues have been smashed and above us is only sky. Polluted sky, of course. I'm no more depressed or dispirited or angry than normal, just foot soldiering on. It's always easier to destroy than to create. Some believe that destruction is a form of creation. Maybe that's the conundrum of the so-called Big Bang.