I myself am an older brother to a younger sister; it has been the single, most enlightening experience to watch her grow, and as I am six and a half years older than her, I watch with fascination as she enters a stage or phase of life just as I am leaving it. It is with both a pleasant surprise and a little guilt to realize that my actions have corroborated in raising her to be who she is, and as I look back and realize that she was a sole witness to many of my bad decisions, I oftentimes feel a dull glow of shame in the pit of my stomach.
But she's grown beautifully, and as I've begun to notice the varying dynamics of siblings all around me, I wonder—what is my role as an older brother?
The Imminent Burden
I can only describe this in the context of my own relationship and the observations I've made in the relationships around me—of course, this post then does not iterate a biological or fundamental basis to my proposal, but it rather reflects a experiential diagnosis that I've found to be true over time.
The plight of the older brother or sister is one we are largely unaware of, because we are simply living our lives. We test the waters of parental discretion, push the boundaries of authoritative reach, and define the parameters of societal infrastructures. In doing so, we are merely trying to, quite simply, live. We are all rebels, but none quite like the elder sibling; it is because we are working under an unprecedented dynamic in our respective family.
In the 10th grade, before I was able to drive, I decided with confidence that I was going to run away from home. However, I had no idea where to go, so I broke into a house across the street from ours that was in between owners; in the morning the following day, I opened the garage door while everyone had left for work or school to sneak back into my own house. For that night, I slept in the attic before calling a taxi the next day and getting myself a Greyhound ticket to North Carolina to visit some friends.
At the time, I had no notion that I was working under a nascent familial dynamic that was particular to my own; I just did it.
The Vicarious Experience
Siblings tend to sympathize and/or empathize fluidly with one another as the collective children of (a) common parent(s). We may innately assume the nature of our brothers and sisters. An older brother or sister will swear with confidence that their younger sibling is "better than that," assuming the best of them. Or it can work the other way; we may hear of a mistake that a sibling makes, and we may think, "I'm not surprised at all." Whatever the case, we say these things because we assume that we know the being of our sibling, what makes them who they really are because we have seen them at their best and worst in the home, where our most careful pretensions fall prey to leisure.
For younger siblings, however, I'd imagine that there is something remarkable about living in a household with their older counterparts. It is that they watch, intrigued, the actions of their brother or sister. Whereas we the older siblings make first-time mistakes, what is inherent to the person of the younger sibling is the front row seat to the aftermath of your decisions.
In the example above, my running away was the first of its kind to happen in our family. Since I'm out doing this, I don't get to watch what it does to our family. But my sister knew. She'd tell me years later that, even as a 9-year-old, she knew that I was in the attic and yet said nothing as an unspoken loyalty to her brother. I was both touched and intrigued by this—for the first time ever, I realized that she had access to a dynamic in my family that I never will, namely when it triangulates into a paradigm about and because of me when I'm not there. She witnessed firsthand the anger, worry, helplessness, and self-doubt that my parents underwent when I committed this transgression. Whereas she sympathized with me and didn't tattle on me, she empathized with my parents because she was a part of a hurting family at home, and this was a dynamic that I would never know.
The Imperative Responsibility
If it hasn't become clear by now, then it should be proclaimed: the older brother/sister is a surrogate parent. In this, both the pros and cons inevitably take effect—you are not exempt if your influence is not positive. In many matters, you are profoundly more influential than your parents are because you are also a part of the world from which parents have long since been dissociated. You are not just a sample of that world, you are an exemplification of it. Whether or not your influence is positive, you matter.
I guess I'd always known this, but it clicked for me on two separate occasions. The first is when I was bored in my parents' house one day a couple years ago and found a project of my sister's from when she was in elementary school. I believe it was from when she was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. It was one of those things where the teacher begins a sentence for the students, and they're supposed to fill it in. I read it with amusement—talking about her friends and hobbies in short subject-verb-object sentences—until I got to the last page. It asked her who she looked up to the most. I quietly closed it after I read the name; it was me. When she was in the second grade, I hadn't even found it worth talking to her because I was in middle school and much too busy with friends.
The last time it happened was not too long ago when, for the first time ever, my sister was bringing a boyfriend out to eat with us. Plans were hard to solidify as it was three separate parties—my parents, me and my wife, and my sister with her boyfriend—trying to align our schedules. I was on the phone with my mom earlier that fateful week when we were talking about our plans, and she told me how she had suggested to my sister that, since it was difficult to plan, they have dinner without me and my wife and plan another get together later on. To this, my mother told me, my sister said, "Then what's the point?"
Needless to say, I cancelled whatever plans I had for that Friday night and made sure to be there. He was a great guy.
The Elusive Enlightenment (or The Delight of the Older Sibling)
And so, it comes to this. I myself struggle with this, but it cannot be avoided. I wrestle hard with this because it calls for us come to terms with what resembles our resemblance to the messianic complex. Our mistakes have shielded our sister or brother from making the same decisions because they reluctantly witnessed the pain that it causes, but this is not to vindicate our mistakes or allow us to be proud of it. Deep down, we know we could've done better by them. We could have served by example, not negation. But the enlightenment comes when we realize that it is not about us.
Biblically, the lesson is hard-earned but self-evident: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth and Naomi, David and his brothers, David and Saul, Simon and Andrew, the prodigal son and his elder, Martha and Mary, etc. The characters are different, and some are surrogate relationships, but the sentiment is the same: the older sibling is called to play the part of honoring the younger. To guide and to love, to support and to accept. Unfortunately, there are many examples of failures biblically, but even these are extremely pertinent for the fact that it shows us the extent and impact of the older.
The role of the older sibling is to un-clothe ourselves of the glory that we think is ours to honor our younger counterpart. Don't deny it—as the elder(-est), you have believed that you are the center of the story, the recipient of glory, around which your family is constructed. Simply being older and thus having the experience of parental providers and a passive observer somehow clouds our perception to believe that it's about us. But what's best for the world is when we step aside to realize that the limelight belongs to a better version of who we are, because we have stood in the oncoming of the arrows that is our misgivings and shortcomings, while they have stood in our shadows, believing they live in our wake, when, in fact, we have thusly been shielding them; but the real mistake is that we conceive our role as a shield to be that we are in actuality the protagonist.
Or perhaps you are the golden child in the relationship and your younger brother or sister has slipped into relative obscurity. I once heard the lament of a friend whose older brother had found the integrity to begin succeeding at his studies and work, while their father did nothing for them at all. For years, he watched unperturbed as his brother became consumed in his climb. Then one day, out of the blue, my friend turned to me and said, "I wish he had just shown me how to get in college."
That brings us to the final example of the older brother: Jesus. If we believe the Gospel, then Jesus is God's first-born and our eldest; and though he deserves the glory because he is sinless, he fulfills the basest role as our servant, lifting up those below him while he was crucified into oblivion.
Whatever the case—whether your past is riddled by mistakes or an example of success—you are in a relationship to your sibling. If we actually believe in the deliberation of our existence, then our role as an older brother or sister is not circumstantial.
It is a call.
