Family:

 

Someone had said that every person is someone’s child, lover, parent, and sibling; they define who we are—this family of ours.  Yet many people have poisionous disputes with other family members.  Why does this happen?  It seems always that the disputes revolve around property, obligation, gratitude, and independence.  Some resent a family, because they believe they can never fully break away from it to start their own family.  Some resent a family because they feel they have been taken advantage of and it is they who should dominate the family.  Every individual is indispute with another individual about who should get to rule and respect and gratitude.  Because all individuals have in them the same ego, these unfortunate, but may be necessary demands, create resentment between family members.  No one has a sense of working out compromises, because everyone demands this respect, even if they have no right to it, or even when they make noises as to they have every right to it, even when they do.  Both people are uncompromising, one in his rightness and the other in his wrongness.  It will always be so.  

 

The first sign that a child is growing into an adult: when his or her writing becomes replete with words enclosed by “…”  He or she is beginning to find which values strike a chord and unsettles his or her spirit—either gracefully or in a common and vulgar manner.