Trying to Build in Compatibilities

My youngest child and I share a professional office ... we've even written some things, together. We often discuss professional matters and soimetimes discuss the nuances of the work we do with the visitors who visit this office. That was the situation on Tuesday. Actually, she and her brood (3 girls and a Greek Philosophy husband) had come over to help me get the cover off the pool. I had done all the preparations and removed a mesh cover that catches Winter's leaves and had bailed and pumped most of the filthy bilge that collects in the October to May of Philadelphia's colder months. The grand-kids are always somewhat excited at the pool coming back to life ... My preparations were adequate to the job and the cover came off with only 4 of us working ... a joint struggle against a common enemy ... a filthy piece of plastic and fiberglass weighing as much as a wild animal as one never gets the last couple of hundred pounds off the cover till after it's removed. ........................ My daughter and I then talked. It was a good talk about a struggling visitor. Was it more appropriate for her or me to support this person in their quest. At some point, our talk turned to an online discussion group to which I belong. I explained that they were fighting. She asked if I was involved. Not this time, I explained. "Wow! Does that mean there have been other fights?" Oh, yeah, I explained ... many and I was not infrequently characterized as troublesome and nasty. It's not easy to explain to a child that Papa is seen very differently by a group of colleagues ... differently than he may be seen by his own family. ............................. Got me thinking about the discussion group. I've mentioned these groups/listservs before in these AM Blog to whomever Last Quarter Players are listening. Most of the folk in these groups are also in the Fourth Quarter. They get angry ... they subgroup in a variety of ways and fight ... talk nasty to each other. Just the previous night there had been a flurry of epithets hurled at the moderator, a younger woman whom I experience as snarky ... but maybe that's me. That we don't really like each other seems obvious. A somewhat older woman was being attacked on both personal issues and theoretical positions. These goes on a lot online ... there's a certain permissiveness to turn these discussions into combat exercises ... the take-no-prisoners variety. ..................... It was when my grandkids came into the office that I decided to write my resignation from membership in that group. It occurred to me that the Good Life in whatever Quarter benefits from a compatibility of its different parts. Like Jepthah returning home from his battles (Judges 12 or 13) and soldiers coming home from contemporary wars (my Dad came home to his brood of kids after WW-II) .... the gross clang-dissonance between different parts of our lives creates more noise than music. ................................. Still working on building those harmonies and compatibilities.