The Width of the Heart.

It's comforting to me somehow to think that while compassion is a shining developmental achievement of mankind, some people just aren't born with it.  They are completely deficient.  They simply do not have the capacity for it, or have trouble recognizing it, even when they see it happening, even when they refer to compassion as something else--weakness perhaps.  How can this be comforting?  How can I view this phenomenon in a positive light, rather than frustration or a heavy acceptance of psychopaths?

I will get to that.  I want to say that, from my perspective, those who "feel" more than those who don't are more often the crazy ones.  The ones bombarded with these extraterrestrial "feelings" are kept from operating within their given reality in a civilized manner.  To be civil, surely, is to ignore passions on a daily basis.  To Feel the passions, to use them up and lavish them with experience and indulge them in sweet execution and delight...now that's crazy.  I think what I'm saying is the argument can go both ways.

But comfort...how am I comforted when facing my opposite?  I am comforted realizing that People Either Feel A Certain Way Or They Don't.  I really have no say in it, no chemical to add to the process.  It means that people play the piano or they can't.  It means you'll be blonde your whole life or you'll be raven.  Someone will love you with the power of a thousand suns or they simply can't--they don't even have the gas for it.  You can no sooner train someone to burn for you than you can train someone to be good at having arms (if they don't).

It is a matter of chemical harmony and becoming frustrated with those who are unABLE to display compassion is truly a senseless act.  We will no sooner teach them heart manners than they will teach us indifference.  We, that is I, can find the night wind that smells of freshly mown grass and just stay put until a time when another passes and asks if I too can detect the smell or we simply catch each other smiling over the simplicity of it.  The beauty of the clean and simple.

I refuse to fall in love with someone so against my feelings ever again.  I will be strong enough to steer clear of the pitfall of opposites.  I will love one of my kind, and they will see my heart.  I will not have to ask them if they can see it, I will know.  And they will view it as the gift that it is, because love is the thing I am good at, though I so rarely give it away.

~ Bernard