Despite my best efforts, one of the core members I live with has racked up a hefty fine at our local library. I try and keep him to a limit of items that he has checked out at one time, but he also goes to the library with his day program and they have not historically kept much of an eye on him when he's there, and he'll end up leaving with a resusable grocery bag full of CDs and books. This becomes hard for him to keep track of, and hard for me to help because I don't even know that he's checked these things out. Because the amount of his fine has reached over a certain limit, he isn't able to check out any more items until that is paid off. We are working on having him pay it off in portions, so it doesn't use up all of his spending money all at once.
Mondays are the day of the week that we traditionally go to the library as a house. It's something that most everyone looks forward to doing. As we were preparing to leave today, I was wondering how I would handle it with this particular core member. If I took him with us, there was a good chance he'd try to check things out and then become frustrated when that was refused. If I left him at home, there was a good chance he'd leave the house and walk to the library on his own while we were gone. So, I thought I'd try to nip it in the bud, and before we left I explained that he was more than welcome to come with us to the library, but because of his fine he wouldn't be able to check anything out. He let out a hefty sigh, and cast his eyes downward, but he seemed to understand what I was telling him.
So we were at the library, and I was perusing the shelves of new fiction, when I glanced over to the CDs and saw him looking through the selection. With one hand he was looking through the CDs on the shelf, and I noticed in the other hand he was holding three CDs. I casually walked over and softly reminded him that he woiuldn't be able to check out those CDs due to his fine, so he should think about putting them back. He responded in an angry tone, so I walked away and gave him some space. Often, if you give him time to think about what you've said, he will end up complying.
However, he moved down the shelf, continuing to look at CDs and kept the three in his other hand. After a couple minutes, I walked back over to him, and told him that if he tried to check those CDs out, that he would be unable to do so, and he would find that frustrating, so I was trying to be a good friend and help him not be frustrated. He said a few more angry things to me.
Fine, I said. Go ahead and do what you want. I was just trying to help. I walked away and went to sit in a chair and wait for everyone to finish up what they were doing. A few minutes after I sat down, one of our other housemates came up to me and handed me a DVD, and told me that he had checked it out for the first core member. I asked him why he did it, and he said because he had asked him to. So, I took the DVD and dropped it in the return box, and went and found him. I told him that he could not check things out, and it wasn't appropriate to ask our housemates to check things out for him. He sighed and grumbled at me again.
Afterwards, as we walked out to the van, there was an air of tension between us. He was mad at me because he was blaming me for being unable to check things out, and I was frustrated with him because my attempts to help were being met with anger. So we drove home without saying much to each other.
A little later this evening, we were all sitting in the living room watching wrestling on TV when he turned to me and said, "Sometimes brothers fight. Can we just hug it out like men?"
In case you were wondering, we hugged and we're not upset with each other anymore. There's a good chance that something similar will happen the next time we go to the library, if he hasn't paid off his fine yet, and there's a good chance that it will be resolved by "hugging it out like men."
This is a lesson that the world could stand to learn from L'Arche - sometimes when we are part of a family we will get angry with each other. But, hugging is always a better alternative to fighting.
