When the home is quiet and harmonious it is the place where great
virtues are developed. But when it is noisy and disharmonious, then its
very seclusiveness, its segregation, lends to the quarrels the
bitterness of civil war. The intensity of feeling aroused is
proportional to the intimacy of the home and not to the importance of
the thing quarreled about. Good manners and that sign and symbol of
largeness of spirit, tolerance for the opinions of others, rarely are
born in the home.
It is hardly realized how much quarreling, how much of intense emotional
violence goes on in many homes. Its isolation and the absence of the
restraining influence of formality and courtesy bring the wills of the
family members into sharp conflict. Words are used that elsewhere would
bring the severest physical answer, or bring about the most complete
disruption of friendly relations. Love and anger, duty and self-interest
bring about intense inner conflict in the home, and the struggle between
the two generations, the rising and the receding, is here at its height.
That courtesy to each other might be taught the children, might be
insisted on by the parents is my firm belief. Love and intimacy need not
exclude form. Manners and morals are not exclusive of each other. If the
marriage ceremony included the vow to be polite, it might leave out
almost everything else. The home should be the place where tolerance,
courtesy, and emotional control are taught both by precept and example.
Can the home be altered to bring in more of the social spirit and yet
maintain its great virtues, its extraordinary attraction for the human
heart? It's an old story that criticism, the pointing out of defect, is
easy, while good suggestions are few and difficult to convert into
programs for action. In medicine diagnosis is far ahead of
treatment,--so in society at large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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