Matters of the Heart

20 years ago I thought I knew a good bit about them – people used you as they could then tossed you aside. Then puberty hit and it got a bit more confusing. Since then I've been forcibly reminded, at regular intervals, just when my brain was getting comfortable, such as last month, that I know jack. I still don’t know Kant, not in the sense that I tangibly understand his distinction between “a means to an end” opposed to “an end in and of.” Do such distinctions exist in the real world? Can it ever be purely one thing and not the other? If it can be, I’ve never seen it, although I’m comfortable thinking of some actions as being 90% of one or the other.

This weekend I realized I had been defending someone who had, relatively objectively speaking, screwed me over pretty badly. My defense of this person disturbed me. In past years I used to harbor a good deal of anger about that whole situation. So I guess I’m wondering if my ebbing of anger led to a kind of conversational after-the-fact-complicity – something I’ve always loathed. I mean, I don’t approve of what happened, but how long can you stay angry? How long should you?