A wonderful read from Dr. D.E Croft (1915)
HOW TO LOVE RELATIVES
To love your relatives be away from home all you can. To have them love you keep about three hundred miles between you and them. Thousands of homes and lives are wrecked by two families of the same family trying to live under the same roof. Noah would have foundered with the Ark ten days after the flood started if he had taken more than two out of any one family with him. Cain would never have killed Abel if Adam hadn't made the fool blunder of trying to keep his two sons everlastingly with him.
If there is any one thing outside a church row, that tickles the devil into a frenzy of laughter it is when a young married couple go home to live with the family. There is about as much real life joy and harmony in it as there would be in a jungle picnic of monkeys and parrots. There is just one place where large families can dwell together peaceably—the grave-yard. It is contrary to natural law that families of grown ups, should live together. When a cub bear is old enough, big enough to hunt for food, and comes back after he once goes out, his mother gives him a mauling that makes him feel he would rather starve than come back again. Does she love him? Of course, she loves him to the limit of her instinct, loves him to the point of pride that she wants him to be a brave, daring, self-reliant master of the forest. When the whelps of a lion get to be more than playful kittens, the mother leads them into the jungle, slips away, leaving them to hunt. The young lions may return to the old home, but their father and mother have moved away to a distant den. To evolve their natures, to become supreme denizens of the forest they must rely upon their own prowess. Take the eagle, when the mother eagle by instinct knows the wings of her babies have become strong enough to support their bodies, she pushes them out of the eyrie. They fly, or will be dashed to death on the rocks. They always fly. But you say human beings are not bears, lions, or eagles. Well, humans could well afford to attend the Nature College of the wild animals of the woods, to learn the ethics of health, happiness and the development of the individual.
Treat your relatives royally, then let them alone. Keep out of their affairs, try to keep them out of your affairs. Be kind, generous, sympathetic. But keep out of the danger zone. Insist upon living by yourself, living your own life, thinking your own thoughts, playing your part in life's drama. Parents wish they could hold their children, the way to hold them is to let go of them. If you love them you will let go. Love is unselfish. God sent His only Son on the loneliest journey ever taken, and He came back crowned with glory. God can live with lots of people you and I can't.
Abraham amounted to something, God said to him: "Get thee out." "And he went out, not knowing whither." He staid until he became the head of a people as numberless and brilliant as the stars of the heaven. But Isaac hung around home, lived on his father's greatness, and the only real thing he did that was worth while was to re-dig some wells his father had dug before him. The first time he saw his sweetheart Rebecca, whom another man had to go and get for him, he lifted up his voice and cried like a boob. He had become soft on the mutton and grape juice of his father. Tender little doves flit around the home cote, but the eagle sweeps from sun to sun. Anyhow, in these modern days children are very largely bringing up their parents."
