There’s always a more complex story. It doesn’t matter what happened, there’s always more to the story. And focusing on the people, rather than the behaviors, choosing sides instead of focusing on bringing everyone on board and improving everyone’s behaviors, is an easy solution but a bad strategy. A parent can’t pick winners and losers. But you can identify when someone went too far and crossed a line, and where things could have been done better. And you need to be willing to do that with both sides, all the time. That kind of analysis and discipline is productive. You always need to be ready to listen to both sides and be willing to take both sides to task. Otherwise you’re not being fair any more. You’re not honoring the law we all want to follow, you’re not representing authority or justice, you’re picking sides.

But boy is it frustrating and boy does it take way more work. You have to listen to both sides, get behind and advocate for both sides, be willing to challenge and criticize both sides. You need to find yourself inside each of them and try to sort out the mess of how things got where they are and why everyone is so upset. Why one walked away, why another lost her temper. And it’s such a painful, frustrating place to put yourself. And you don’t get to win any points or acclaim by endorsing a side. You have to stay neutral. Which sometimes feels like being everyone’s enemy. You have to be there for both of them. And that means being there for who they could be, together, if both of them could only follow our shared ideals. You can’t side with who they are.

Because the line of good and evil runs down the heart of every person, choosing any side is failing to choose good and committing yourself to approving some evils and ignoring some goods. Choosing the good means choosing the good in everyone and resisting the mistakes in everyone. It means loving everyone for who they could be and being willing to stand up to who they are. It means winning them over with your fairness and your desire to see both of them benefit and grow and flourish. It means maintaining hope for the best from both of them and not being willing to ignore the worst from either of them.

Of course the real problem is, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. If one girl genuinely doesn’t want to compromise or be in harmony with the other, then I can make them. I can set limits and enforce consequences for crossing those limits, but I can’t make them want to love each other or listen to each other. I can’t make them play together. Sometimes all I can do is put up walls and separate them from each other and prevent further fighting. Which means they both miss out on a lot. A lot of what happens in our house rides on mutual goodwill.

I can try to make that easier. I can try to help them understand the other person’s perspectives. I can help them see the flaws in themselves and the reasons behind the other person’s feelings and actions. But ultimately it’s their decision if they want to play of if they want to fight, if they want cooperation or competition. Neither of them has an inherent right to prevail over the other, neither has an inherent right to dismiss the other. Apart from an appeal to rules to which we can all be subject. By that measure, one may pull ahead and one may fall behind (usually they’re both chasing each other down as they both accuse the other, rightly in both cases, of being mean or stupid or careless). But anyone could find themselves on one side of the law or the other at some time.

We’re only a family of four, but sometimes I feel like I’m running a small country, with warring states within it. Every day there’s a new dispute. Every day negotiations break down and resume a dozen times. Somehow I have to keep them both at the table. It’s a thankless position. Everybody likes people who will take their side. No one likes having their side challenged. We love one and hate the other.

Still, I try to take the long view, and I remind myself of what happened when I worked at a hotel in college. It took me a while to figure out that almost everyone there was caught in a web of competition and resentment. All the employees were gossiping about one another. They all resented each other and resented the customers, but everyone needed everybody else and had to work with them to get what they wanted. So they gossiped and criticized and played their little schoolyard games. It was very tempting to join in, but I never did, and I often had to cross just about everyone, or at minimum resist the affirmation and comradeship that comes from joining in with the group, the sympathy of the chosen side. I felt isolated, like I was no one’s friend, always on the outside, always resisting and refusing everyone and never giving them what they wanted. I didn’t like it, but I felt like it was right.

And then, on the day I quit, I got a big surprise. Every single employee came up to me one by one and told me privately that I was their favorite employee, that I was the only person they could trust or stand. Not just one, not just a few. Every single employee. That was such a confusing day for me. I thought nobody liked me. I thought I was outside every group. And only on the last day did I realize that, while that was perfectly true, my position had bought me something no one else had. Access to every group, because my loyalty wasn’t to any of them. My only loyalty was to how I acted within each of them, never willing to embrace their worse habits, always willing to embrace their best ones. Always wanting to greet everyone on their best terms, never willing to join them on their worst (in hating the others, particularly). That’s where real trust comes from. Trust that’s bigger than just a party platform. Not from loyalty, not from standing behind someone. But from standing behind something bigger that transcends us all, and even myself.

I don’t know if things will work out with my kids the way they did with my coworkers. This is a way more complex situation, and to be honest I’ve made way, way more mistakes. I have not always been the best parent (understatement). In fact I’m sort of horrified sometimes thinking back on how impatient and unfair and angry and frustrated I’ve been. I have high ideals, but I’ve had an awfully time trying to live up to them. But maybe, overall, I’ve done more good than harm? I guess we’ll see. I’m still in process as a person and as a parent, unfortunately. I didn’t get that anointing I somehow thought would come when I had my first kid, that would transform me into an adult and a parent and grant me all the knowledge and power in the universe. It turns out, I have to do all this as me. Just me. And that’s a terrifying burden. But it’s my burden to carry.