Two Fools Quarrelling

Thomas Fuller said something in a short and meaningful sentence that pertains to loved ones, families, friends, and to all relationships of life: “The world is too marrow for two fools a quarrelling.” There isn’t any place in all this wide world where one would be comfortable with quarrelling. There isn’t any happiness of any kind that wouldn’t be blighted by quarrelling. There isn’t any place wide enough anywhere, that wouldn’t seem cramped by quarrelling. Life has enough problems of other kinds, for all of us, without adding quarrelling and contention. But it happens. It happens at home; it happens at work; in the public and private places – people quarrelling, criticizing, accusing; cutting deep wounds, saying things they shouldn’t say – things thy often do not know; breaking hearts, solving nothing, hurting themselves. Quarrelling hurts especially with family and friends. It hurts when children are helplessly caught in a crossfire between tow quarrelling, contending parents – or, to use another figure, between the snipping blades of a pair of scissors. Children are so often the victims of what adults shouldn’t do. There is also the public kind of quarrelling, where the contenders seem determined to cut each other down. Of course there are mistakes, facts to be faced – performance that isn’t good enough, grievances which cannot altogether be brushed aside. But there are unkind and kinder ways of correction. And since there is no perfection in any of us, we have no right to expect it of others. Hearts can be broken, lives blighted, homes made unhappy, and friends and families pulled apart by quarrelling, and by frequent magnifying of faults. There is no peace, no pleasant place, no home, no heart that can’t be hurt by quarrelling and contention. This world needs kindness, compassion, understanding. It is too cramped for two fools quarrelling.