Building A Life, Building A World

compatible: capable of existing together in harmony.

Clearly there is compatible and there is COMPATIBLE. My wife and I are compatible. How about you and your partner? How many couples have you run across that struck you as COMPATIBLE?

I'm guessing Joan Didion and her late husband John Gregory Dunne were COMPATIBLE. If you've read Didion's 2005 memoir "The Year Of Magical Thinking", I think you'd agree. These two people worked side-by-side in their home for the nearly 40 years they were married. When they weren't facing each other over their respective writing desks they were travelling the world together as reporters.

A few years ago my wife and I visited the Lakota Wolf Preserve in northern NJ, a fascinating place run by a couple who struck me as COMPATIBLE.  My evidence? Just the two of them - and about 40 wolves - occupy that remote place, where they've operated a self-sufficient business for many years. My latest COMPATIBLE example (i.e. the direct inspiration for this post) is the couple who together run the even-more-remote Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Center from where we just returned. Outwardly, what these three couples appear to have done is built a world unto themselves.

The life my wife and I have built together is wholly satisfying to me. And I'm sincerely happy for anyone who finds someone with whom they are COMPATIBLE. Still, in this instance I'm happy to share the bell curve with the great majority of people I've known. How about you? Is COMPATIBLE for you?