Family Values

Lessons from an Egyptian Farmer

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A Visit to Cairo

Last fall I traveled to Egypt and Morocco. While was great to hike the Atlas Mountains and Mount Sinai, see the pyramids and scuba dive the Red Sea, the most impactful experience was a conversation with an Egyptian farmer.

Cairo is crazy, chaotic, and tough to navigate. Few travelers and expats drive there. A friend of mine from Austin, who lived in Cairo for three years, connected me with his driver to tour the city.

Cairo traffic: There’s not much respect for personal space or lanes—lots of honking!

My driver and tour guide was named Ibro, and his brother Hussein picked me up at the airport the night before we toured the city.

Airport Pickup: For fun, I gave them my good friend’s name for the pickup. I wish I had taken a picture of his name in the sea of signs at the arrivals area of Cairo International Airport.

The tour around Cairo was fantastic. Of course, we visited the pyramids, but we also explored local markets, a mosque near a major Islamic university, the River Nile, and “the City of the Dead,” a massive neighborhood consisting entirely of family burial grounds.

The Pyramids of Giza were massive and impressive. However, their wide base and lack of height references make them appear not as tall as they actually are.

A Legacy of Family

As we toured the city I learned Ibro’s personal story. Ibro’s father was a farmer in a village outside Cairo. There, 22 family members live together in one house: his parents, Ibro, his three brothers, their wives, and 12 children across the four brothers.

It’s customary for wives to move into the family home, so in the future, as many as 10 more women could join the household—10 of the 12 children are boys. Ibro explained that they will eventually build additional floors onto the home and possibly new structures on the property to accommodate family growth.

The four brothers run a business together where they offer transport, tours and housing to embassy personnel. They share resources across the family, and the children benefit from seeing behaviors and values modeled by more than just their own parents. They aren’t wealthy, but they are doing well by Egyptian standards, and seem to live according by their values, with a strong sense of community and purpose.

A Cultural Reset

Living with 22 people in one house is probably far from glamorous. but it may reflect a richer, more connected human experience. In the West, we’ve placed too much emphasis on individualism. I recently came across Instagram that highlighted how our society has “attached success to isolation” - a sentiment that feels fairly accurate.

If you look at the happiest people, such as in the “Blue Zones,” three of their nine ingredients for a meaningful life are related to connection with others.

Has our society placed too much emphasis on individual success, materialism and individualism?

In the process, have we set a standard that promotes perfectionism above real relationships?

Much of this is a biproduct of material wealth and housing costs. In Europe, and other parts of the world many people live in family owned homes well into adulthood. In contrast, many American have the means to move out and acquire property, which offers convenience and space but may come at the cost of deeper connectedness shared experiences.

It’s no secret that there is rise of loneliness in our culture. Self-help content is all over the internet and it doesn’t seem to be stopping, even in business the word “community” has become a cliche. I think part of it is a continued expectations of perfectionism and as a result a counteracting epidemic of shame. Many of the problems that people are facing I believe are symptom of isolation, something that is relatively new to our species. And it doesn’t get any better when our society doubles down on cultural stories of individualism and perfectionism.

Rethinking Happiness

Last year on Tuesdays with Morrisey I interviewed Dr. Corey Keyes, one of the leading researchers on the science of human flourishing. Dr. Keyes was an early pioneer of the positive psychology movement but has grown tired of its overemphasis on independence, happiness, and simply “feeling good.” He believes we need to “stop trying to be happy” because “people need to break down.” He argues that “nothing truly good in life comes without some sacrifice and suffering” and that it’s “better to be happy as a result of having meaning and purpose than to strive for happiness without those things or to seek happiness from unsustainable sources.” He urges us to reconsider what it means to be “doing well” and “what makes a good life.”

A Shift Towards Connection

As economic uncertainty looms and housing costs rise, I can imagine a future where Americans begin to live more like other parts of the world—with intergenerational housing and a re-emergence of ethnic, cultural, religious, or other social groups. I don’t think that would necessarily be a bad thing. After all, for most of human history, this is how we’ve lived. The human story of endurance is rich with meaning, connection and support for one another.

Challenging events, like the LA fires or Hurricane Helene, can serve as invitations to consider what really matters in our short and interconnected lifetimes as well as a reminder that people being displaced from their homes and experiencing hardship isn’t anything new, and certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed about.

A film that captures the emotional weight of human hardship is Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), particularly a scene where a mother reveals to her family that they only have 20 zloty (the local currency) left after Jews were banned from working. Watching that scene, and others in the film, I feel the same feelings I had when I saw a college friend's video of his family walking through the remains of their fire-destroyed Pacific Palisades home.

A Personal Story

While global events and historical hardships can highlight human connection and resilience, many powerful examples come from quiet, personal stories within our own families. One of the greatest examples of family values in my own family came from my grandfather’s Aunt Madge. After she passed, she offered much of her estate to my cousins and siblings in the form of college education trusts.

Reflecting on that recently, I’m moved by how simply she and my great-great-uncle Fred lived in Youngstown, Ohio—he as a wholesale fruit and produce salesman—and how they still managed to leave such a selfless legacy. This stands in stark contrast to our culture which often celebrates excess and consumerism.

What About You?

Do you have a story of family values that moves you? I’d love to hear it. Feel free to reach out, comment, or share this article with a friend.