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HARMONY
AT HOME. "I have
recently married for the second time. My husband is a splendid man but his
grown up children are not in harmony with me. Good people, but a
different point of view. I make no pretensions to perfection, of course, but I
do try to do the best lean." This is the
gist of several letters I have received from as many different
women. I will answer them together. When you enter
a new home the matter of importance is not whether your new relatives
harmonize with you, but whether you harmonize with them. It is
for you to do all the adjusting. This may seem
hard, but it is not. It is an easier matter for one person to readjust
her living than for a whole family to change. The family has not only its
individual customs to hold each one, but its family customs as well;
whilst you have left your family and have only your individual self to
readjust. If you refuse to adjust yourself, for no matter what reason, you
will act upon this family you have entered, as a red hot iron would act
upon a pan of water - there'll be boil and bubble, toil and trouble
and the family will fly to pieces. All because you came in with positive
notions of your own which you insist upon enforcing. But if you
come into the family like a lump of sugar into a glass of water you will
all, in time melt together and the whole family will be the sweeter
and better for your coming. Whatever there is in you which is better and
sweeter than their own ideas and customs will in time be absorbed by
the family; for what is good is ever positive to the less good, and has
a power of its own to convert; and every human soul, if left free,
will eventually choose the good. The only
danger lies in your tilting your nose at their ways and ideas, and
insisting upon your own. That rouses the sense of individuality
in them and they then fight for their ways and ideas - then
there's boil and bubble and sputter and flying apart. Learn to
vibrate with people where you can and keep still when you can't. Look
for the little things you can enjoy together, and make light of the
others. Recognize their right to differ from you, and REMEMBER that
"all judgment is of God" - their judgment as well as yours. All this
differing of judgment among the people of earth is simply God
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