“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This quote is  reminder that there is exactly one way to have a happy family — have everything go right.  On the hand, there are millions of ways in which a family can go wrong: attraction, personality, money, religion, and the list goes on.  I think this also applies more generally to what’s termed the Lollapalooza Effect where things conspire together to reach that critical mass where amazing things start happening.  Leave just one ingredient out and the magic doesn’t happen.  The corollary to this is that even if one thing is missing, there’s no rule that says you can’t fill in that gap yourself.  No one has everything going right from the start — they make it happen.

Happy families may be rare, but they don’t have to be.