THE NEW COLONY

I was watching the NCAA semi finals yesterday and I began to think how intelligently top teams are put together...ten or so players trying to win by combining their various individual skills in different parts of the game: driving and long-range shooting, rebounding, defense, playmaking, dribbling. It was like looking at the inside of a beautiful watch. It made me think about the popular structure of the team that society promotes as best for the game of life, and wonder it is still a winner.

That structure is the Family...meaning parents and their natural or adopted children. In olden days, when life may have been harder but simpler, that team generally did alright. The man hunted and carried a weapon to protect the family, the mother raised, often educated, the children, cleaned the house and cooked, and the children helped by feeding the animals and doing other odd chores.

I wonder if that family team structure is still the best today. I wonder whether the complexities and the pace of modern day life, plus the ever burgeoning array of necessary chores, can in fact be well handled by two adults and some children.

A partial list of today's chores:

Earning an ever growing quantity of money to pay for an ever growing flood of new goods and services, expanding government taxes, auto, home, life, health and drug insurance, college and graduate school education, and the weekly new technological toys that seem to convert last week's toys into antiques;

Detailed bookkeeping, record keeping, of a wide variety of financial and family activities;

Investments of family funds, including potential retirement income;

Maintenance of property and an array of machinery;

Teaching teenagers how to survive and succeed in a fast paced, brutally competitive world.

How many Moms and Dads can do all that well? And if one or both of them should leave or get ill or die, havoc in the family!

I wonder if the Colony (formerly Family), taking account of modern day life and conditions, ought ideally and sensibly consist of:

3 wage earners
1 shopping expert
1 mechanic
1 dietician/physical therapist
1 psychologist/philosopher idea person
1 accountant/investment money specialist
1 spiritual/art person
2-3 "anxious to help in any way we can" children

At least 2 of the adults in the Colony to be women. Colonists who do not play the game well or do not get along with other members of the Colony would be released and replaced. The sole object of the Colony? To win.

And, of course, there would be the Colony Coach...who has no chores other than to see to it that everybody else does theirs. Sounds like a job for you know who.