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"Why did you move my stuff and not return it?" I shouted at my cousin.

"What's the big deal. You just like to complain about everything" he shouted right back in my face

"Oh, it's like that right. If you know you'll keep on repeating this nonsense, then you'd better stay away from any of my things" 

"Fine, I'll go get mine. You always like to lord your things over others with all your silly rules" 

The argument and shouting was nothing new to us, we were used to it and what usually followed was another few weeks of ignoring one another. This was a norm between I and my cousin whenever we had an argument with no one willing to back down.

The fact that we were living together in school meant this type of argument was unavoidable as each sides believed that it was the other party that was being unreasonable.

Being cousins meant that we'd spent enough time with each other growing up for both our parents to believe we'd get along living together in school. For the most part it was fun living together, but whenever there was an argument it took special grace to end the beef.

Which was why it didn't occur to us that there was anything wrong with our behavior when we decided to visit an Uncle during the holidays. 

We arrived at his place and for the first few weeks there were no incidents because there was quite a number of things to occupy our minds, but eventually one night we had another argument which led to a shouting match when our uncle was around.


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The next morning he called us both and our obvious attempt at ignoring each other seemed funny to him. He pointed out the facts we were both avoiding and refusing to see. It was the fact that we were both proud and unwilling to admit our mistakes whenever we were wrong.

Truely as i thought about it most of our arguments were over silly things that could've easily been overlooked or apologized for, but admitting mistakes wasn't something we'd been willing to do all the years we stayed together. 

There were some particular statements my Uncle made that stuck with me till today.
He told a story about two of his friends who had refused to talk to each other for months.

They had both coincidentally come to pay him a visit on the same day and were surprised to find one another there. They immediately ignored one another but he eventually had to remind them that
> The only time we have together is the time we're alive because once you're dead, you won't even get the chance to say hello to anyone anymore. 
The time that they could've spent together creating good memories was what they were wasting over silly disagreements.

He said that was the day both friends ended their disagreement. I and my cousin both saw the wisdom in his statement immediately.

My Uncle wasn't trying to tell us not to have our different opinions, he was only trying to remind us that if we avoided such arguments or if we settled them quickly, then we would both spend more time together instead of away from each other.

Time was the number one commodity we thought we had but for every time we spent angry at one another, it was time we would probably wish we'd let go of our egos when we had the chance.

It was a much needed lesson.