I myself had the pleasure or exasperating experience of growing up with brothers, 1 older and 2 younger. I was as well very close to my cousins which where all boys as well. My Grandparents had 9 grandsons and no grand daughters. Things could get hairy whether one of us was shooting the other with a B B Gun just for the fun of it or we where establishing our manhood by fighting tooth and nail for the front seat, but we always knew when enough was enough. The love although hid deep to show toughness, was always there with the true desire to help each other get better and be successful. Tempers and passions could flare in an instant without the least care of looking a fool or being right it was all about winning. Winning what, you might ask and that would be whatever we where doing. It might be fishing, running, jumping the highest or just out and out arguing all of our energy was focused on dominating the other because that is what brothers do. They test us. They take us to our extremes so we can stretch them a bit further if future occasion requires it. Brothers poke us where it stings partly to watch us squirm but mostly to watch us advance. Brothers have a duty to each other and while we may think this love should be pretty all the time it can get ugly but one option we never had was giving up on one another. It might take a week or two to get over the ego blast a brother laid on me or just the lumps I took but before long we where side by side again. Two of the best lesson my older brother taught me came with allot of pain and reflection. One lesson was with his right fist the other was when he called me on my negative attitude and tore into me for behaving in that way. Had my brother kept his tongue for the value of peace and harmony then I would probably still be that negative jack-ass I was at nineteen. I see little difference within our fraternity. While we must respect each other to the utmost of our abilities we must also destroy bad attitudes our Brothers can pick up on the journey of life. This does have to be done differently than my blood brothers and I did because our good counsel never came by whisper. There must be room to wrestle with ideas and ideals brothers carry so we may experience life as another brother has which will only intensify the light in our lives. The differences we have as individual masons is what make us strong as a group and we must draw on these differences and not condense them into one aspect of the craft. Very few if any masons carry passions without reasons and we must be willing as Masons to always hear out reason as far as it may be from our own. Then if found worthy it may be something you incorporate into your own life if not maybe your reasoning could deviate the brother from his original thought and bring him to a more educated stance. One way or another if this processes is done correctly someone will change and probably both men. This is what makes brothers, brothers. We have to at times as my coach would say “fight it out†which will cause tempers to flare and passions to bounce madly within our circle but when reason prevails we should all walk hand in hand again. We are all good people from vastly different upbringings and we cannot forget that because as said before our diverse experiences are the largest source of strength the craft has.