Name: Jirah Denise D.

Santos
Section: Mendeleev
Date: May 10, 2023
Philosophical Question: What relationships (relationship with sibling, or friend etc.) you have
difficulty dealing with? Narrate event or scenario for each relationship when this relationship
challenged you. What is your realization for each relationship?

I have met a lot of people in my life. There are people that I’ve met in my past that I do
not keep in contact with anymore, like some classmates from pre-school and even elementary. I
generally have little issues with most of my friends and peers and am polite to strangers as well.
Sometimes things will tick me off but only on days where I am feeling under the weather. My
family, however, is a whole different conversation – like most people, there are things about
some of my family members that I generally dislike.

1) I am quick to get irritated at my younger sister. My sister, who is six years

younger than me, has a very different personality to mine. Typical of any siblings, we get
into disagreements, usually when we’re doing her homework. One time, I was in a
particularly bad mood when my dad told me to go help my sister with an assignment of
hers, and I begrudgingly did so. My sister notices this quickly and makes a comment,
saying that she hopes I don’t start any fights. Annoyed, I asked her what she meant by
that, and she responded by saying I always seem to be in a bad mood when we start
doing her homework. As soon as she said that, I felt embarrassed and realized that she
was right. While my sister and I generally have a good relationship, I should learn to be
more calm with her when I’m helping her do stuff because I wouldn’t want her to resent
me for those times.

2) My father’s temper. I am a forgetful person, someone could tell me something one

month ago and there’s a high chance that I’ve forgotten about it. The case with my dad? I
get scolded a lot for the same few reasons. As I type this, I can’t even recall what most of
those (trivial) reasons were, the things I remembered from those scolding moments were
my own feelings of sadness and irritation towards my dad, for I have known that we’ve
had the same conversations over and over, usually in the car or over text. I try to see
things from my dad’s perspective and it makes me think that it’s probably frustrating on
his end as well. I knew then that I should be considering the feelings of others, but I
oddly have difficulty doing that when it comes to my family and I am trying my best to
work on that by putting myself in their shoes.

3) My grandmother from my mother’s side. My grandmother has been a good one to

me but towards my cousin… not so much recently. My cousin moved into our house two
years ago and during that time, I’ve seen and heard how my lola speaks to my cousin. It
isn’t pleasant. One time, it even became known to our lola that I was a lesbian and, until
now, she does not believe that I am one due to the way I dress. I don’t see her often, so I
do not deal with those kinds of conversations (not that I’m looking forward to it,
anyway). However, I know that she is treating my cousin badly, so my general feelings
 towards my lola started to change. My lola doesn’t live with us, but whenever she does
stay or visit, she tries to start conversations with me about my cousin and I do my best to
defend her and rationalize with my lola. I’ve grown to be patient with her.

I think I have difficulty dealing with my feelings when it comes to my family. I am

learning to be more open with my friends, and hope that I can be the same with my family. My
overall challenge lies with communication — communicating my own feelings, and
communicating the feelings of others. I hope that as time goes on my relationship with others
(and general social skills) improve.