Le coeur a ses raisons ...

... la raison ne sait dont rein.

I got a call on Saturday afternoon that resulted in my spending Saturday evening (and Sunday morning) with my sister and her girls, who also happen to be my nieces. My sister and my mom are playing similar shitty roles in similar shitty plays – as they get to watch their sisters deal with similar shitty circumstances. As someone who prides herself on being observant, I noticed that if one were to assign parents to my sister and I, as in “who is more like whom”, she would be my mom and I’d be my dad.

My sister and my mom are both far more fragile than my dad and I. They have, in their lives, both willingly put themselves in situations where they are damn near guaranteed to be somehow disappointed. And yet, they do this over and again – not from lack of intelligence, but in an overwhelming display of belief of goodness in the world. I envy them, right up until the disappointment plays out. And then, because we are family … because we’re also friends … because this is what we DO, my father and/or myself help them to their feet again, with no mention of "I told you so" because … what good does that do anyway? I don’t know that I wanna be in a world where a belief of goodness in humanity is something to be mocked.

My father and I are the harder members of the family. We’re the "go-big-or-get-outta-my-way" teammates. We give big. We laugh big. We love big. We smile big. We FEEL big. But we also have long memories of who disappoints us, and getting off that list takes patience and persistence that most people just don’t have. We – my dad and I – have very few really close friends – but those that are just have to barely mention a desire, need, craving, or problem before we’ll lend whatever we can to assist. When we are hurt, we generally don’t reach out at all. We close up as tight as oysters, working on the irritating piece of sand, before we can spit it out as the pearl we’ve made it out to be – the lesson learned. (I hate to brag – but that’s a DAMN nice metaphor. Feel free to use it.)

Soon, I suspect, that most of my friendships – both casual and close – will be tested. Decisions and actions that I’ve made will be questioned, and people will either walk away shaking their heads in disbelief and disappointment, or they will decide that things that make me happy don’t necessarily need to make sense. It won’t easy, on either side of the equation, and I don’t MEAN to make waves, honest. I’ll respect the reactions of these folks, too – because that is what friends do.

The quote at the start of my babble today is from Blaise Pascal, who also gave us such gems as "Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves” and “I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world”.

My title translates, loosely, as "The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of."