8. Surrender nonessentials. Many a marriage has gone to smash because husband or wife or both clung as a matter of principle to a point which could easily have been given up and forgotten if both had centered on the great underlying essentials. Do not acquiesce ignobly on vital matters. But do not wreck your own happiness and that of your mate over some comparatively minor issue that was never worth the tears and the agony which it caused.
9. Agree to live and let live. Cultivate freedom for your mate, your children, and all the people involved in your family problems. To be oneself is one of the most precious rights of a human being. We need it for the fulfillment of our own life. Our loved ones need that same freedom for the fulfillment of their lives. Now, freedom is not defiance of law, but voluntary fulfillment of law. The better we understand each other and the laws of life, the more likely we are to find that freedom which brings the fullness of joy. By one of those strange paradoxes, we never fully win the love of our dear ones until we cease demanding it.
10. Put the welfare of your family first, and stop fretting about yourself. Although this rule comes last in our list, it really comes first in the search for fulfillment of personality in family life. What do you really want from your mate and your children? Are you after comfort, security, affection for yourself? Or do you want, above all things, that these loved comrades of yours shall find the road to the abundant life—shall experience richly and grow fully, until they find their true places in the master pattern of our world adventure?
Answer that question honestly. Live up to your real decision. And if with all your heart you seek the joy of these others, your love will be met with the high tide of love, and even out of anguish you will win your way into the meaning and the glory of existence.
CHAPTER NINE
Sex Instruction in the Home
A young woman who has won a place for herself as an artist tells the story of her first nude drawing. She was of scarcely more than kindergarten age when, one day before supper, her fancy produced a sketch of her ten-year-old brother in nature's own attire. Pleased with the result, she took it to the supper table and gave it to him—"A picture I made of you."
Brother looked, glanced swiftly at Mother, and started to pocket the sketch. Mother said, mother-fashion, "Let me see it," and then, after seeing, also started to slip the picture out of sight. Father held out his hand. "Let's have a look." Around the table the drawing passed from hand to hand. No one praised, no one spoke, no one smiled. When one of the younger children started to say something, he was abruptly told to eat his supper. Heavy hung the weight of unexplained guilt over the five-year-old artist. After the meal her mother took her quietly aside and said, "When you draw a picture of a boy, you don't have to draw everything!"