Trouble at Mill

Subject: FW: Trouble at Mill

 

 

 

If you wished to describe a rumpus amongst family members you might describe it a trouble at mill. The mill in the old days,  down at the end of the cobbled street to which the men and women trudged each day to do their shift was, next, to family the most constant source of camaraderie and friction. 

The people you knew as neighbours and work colleagues, made up of disparate families, each with their different tastes and idiosyncrasies, each resolute to get their view across and often indifferent to your own were the grist of the mill and of daily life.

The friendly greeting each morning was replicated out of habit, the banter similarly, a sort of repartee which people arm themselves with when proper conversation is dangerous. There's nothing malicious in the frown which indicates you've trodden on a corn, a difference of opinion, a bias which runs deep and only it indicates how deep the current of our lives run.

We are all full of bias, we have all picked up the tics of disagreement which are based on personal experience and often resentment. Our way of dealing with difference is different (what else would you expect) untrained in conflict management, even perhaps proud of your difference, perhaps even enjoying the difference  since the difference may be down to a life spent away from the one you disagree and life's experience has drawn you in a different direction. 

Some people decline to outwardly differ preferring the 'consensus' of the middle ground to the rough and tumble of the marginal extreme. For them the negotiation is always to defuse the verbal fight and to seek a centre ground where nothing grows but conformity

The great social movements which have sparked the revolutions in the past, the ideological held opinion on which, right and wrong are individually based, have no place in the culture of simbahan. The need to love all and sundry and respect everyone regardless of their tribal proclivity is carried through to the point where  to accept there are different interpretations of good and bad, is an anathema to the new 'holy'.

And so it is with family, the differences in age and experience put us on a different footing but, unlike in the mill, where we can chose to walk up the other side of the street or chose a different set of friends to chat, family ties bind you to make good even if your views are a trillion miles apart. There's no bridging the gap as you try to shout across the divide, fearful you will lose sight of the person you love. both in danger of losing something precious. 

Under normal circumstances you chose your friends but with family you are stuck, puzzling how they feel so differently about such and such and evermore afraid to project your life long held opinion for fear of it being shot down.  It's easy to be convinced of the necessity of kumbaya, of a youthful cry to disinherit you of past values and prerogatives, which place freedom and rights above responsibilities. With values in disarray, with the concept of family blown to smithereens, with drugs and knife crime on our streets increasing daily then yes I hanker after some of the old curbs which we used to accept for the genuine acceptance of our neighbours.

Neighbours were seen in the old days as people within walking distance of the mill. We had many common traits and could recognise each other, even on a dark night. Today we glorify the neighbourhood in Bangladesh as if it were our own, we seek communion with the Chinese whilst not understanding the social rigour of Confucius. We misunderstand the tight conformity of the Muslim faith when compared to the loose arrangement of Christianity, we misunderstand middle eastern misogyny for tribal custom, we are awash in a quagmire of do gooding without realising that our true neighbours, the ones at the end of the street have been left behind in a culture of seeing only the good in others, far far away.