Seriously Cain I Know That Feel

The story of Cain and Abel depicts the first murder in the Bible. Cain and Abel are the first sons of Adam and Eve, and each has particular skills - Cain is a farmer, reaping fruits and vegetables from the Earth. Abel,, Cain's younger brother, is a shepherd, raising livestock and and slaughtering them for their meat. The brothers present offerings of their labors to God, and evidently God is not a vegetarian because He "had regard" for Abel and his offering over Cain and his. Cain, understandably steamed by God's favoring Abel, as if mom and dad babying his little brother all the damn time wasn't good enough, decides to take a radical (but narratively more interesting - thanks Cain) approach to this sibling rivalry, and murders his brother in a field.

I sympathize with Cain, to a degree. Sometimes I, too, want to murder my siblings in a field. However, unlike Cain, this is rarely out of a sense of inferiority (OK, sometimes I wish I had my youngest sister's activity/metabolism but that's rarely why I want to bash her skull in with a rock in an empty pasture). Rather, I would attribute most of my sibling conflicts to personality and values clashes. Despite sharing something like 50% of our DNA and the same general upbringing, my two younger sisters and I have all emerged with rather distinct personalities and (at least in my case, compared to them) even more distinct values. This leads to conflicts ranging from the banal (what are we watching on Netflix tonight) to the persistently irritating (my sister's lack of initiative in getting up, which causes me to arrive later to school than I'd like) to the Now-I-Understand-Why-Cain-Killed-His-Brother (my youngest sister's frequent and Always Unnecessary chastising me for using """""swear words""""" in casual conversation.) Admittedly, I'm beginning to realize that many of these conflicts are in part due to a maturity gap - particularly as one of my sisters nears me on the Maturity Curve as she is now in her sophomore year, while the other remains down in the nether regions of middle school.

Depictions of Cain's murder of Abel have been variously described as "metal," "frickin rad," and "woah look at all these hairless shirtless dudes." (Painting by Peter Paul & Mary Rubens, circa 1608)