Thank goodness I have 3 siblings, not 13.

A famous scholar once said, “Never give up; never surrender.” I failed to heed that advice, and now I get to suffer the consequences.

Justice is one of those words that everyone understands and no one can explain. Mixed in with the term are notions of getting what one deserves, of fairness and equality, and of worth and value. More fundamentally, mixed with our understanding of justice is the concept of right and wrong. All of these things, again, are things that everyone understands but no one can explain. We all try, and when we do we say things that seem deep and sound truthful and meaningful and yes, even profound sometimes. But ultimately, after all the words have finished and all the talking is done, we still feel that we haven’t captured everything that these seven letters describe.

No attempt is made here to define justice; I have learned not to wade into some topics. But if I had to define justice, I know who I would ask for an explanation: the older of my two younger sisters. She is almost certainly the only other person on this planet who has a more accurate list of my misdeeds as a child than my parents; I would almost be willing to say that she has a more accurate list than I do. A large part of that is because most of my misbehavior was against some subset of my siblings, so she always got a good view. But more important than that was that I, like many children, was slow to apologize for my actions. She never let me get away with that. Whenever I tried to ignore my actions and move on, she would hold it over my head until I apologized.

To this day I would almost guarantee that on a list of her top ten memories involving me, one of the top three involved my accidentally (or intentionally if you listen to her side of the story) closing a van door on her finger. She shows off the scar every chance she gets. But more important is that she knows the details of that day better than I do, though I must admit she felt the pain, not me. Growing up she was always the most stubborn in her anger with the rest of us siblings and with parents as well. But as I look back with 20/20 vision now, it is quite easy to see that she was the most upset when she felt she was being wronged, being treated unfairly, not getting what she deserved. Though I won’t put them on the spot, I think even my parents would admit that sometimes she was right; in fact, I know they would, as the phrase I will forever remember from my father’s repeated uttering of it was the phrase, “Life’s not fair.” They had their reasons, and she will someday grant that they were good reasons; but justice, justice was what mattered to her.

My sister has faith, has belief, perhaps more strongly than anyone I have ever met. Not just belief in God; many people, the rest of my family and I included, have that. Not in herself, though with the many blessings she has received she could easily fall into that trap (even if she is the fat, ugly, bad-haired sister). She has faith in justice, as I have mentioned. But she also has faith in other people and their senses of justice. All of these things combine to give her, not the total confidence of the morally bankrupt, that confidence arising from a conviction that nothing matters but oneself; but the sublime confidence needed to stand up for one’s beliefs, the sublime confidence of one who knows something that others do not. And for her that extra bit of information is that justice can win, if we will stand up for it. I just wish she did not have to stand up for it against me so often.

On the lists of the great pioneers of justice her name may never appear. On the list I keep it graces the page with all of them. She decided that teaching was for her and is just getting started. Since junior high school she has known this was to be her path, citing her love of kids and school. But I think on a deeper level even that is evidence of this sense of justice, since what better place for a champion of justice than a classroom where not only do you teach children justice for the future but in being a good teacher (and she is and will be a very good teacher) you can close gaps between children at different levels and give everyone the opportunity for a better future. Everyone deserves chances, and she gets to help ensure that her students get them and can make the most of them.

G.K. Chesterton a century ago lamented that humility as one of the seven heavenly virtues had been reversed to the detriment of mankind. He said that humility was supposed to mean that while man was to be sure of his aims he was doubtful of his efforts; instead, he said, it had come to mean that people were quite sure of their actions but never certain of their aims. Humility was to him the spur that drove one to work harder but had become the pebble in the shoe that makes one stop altogether. The charge was true then and is true now; the times in my life where I have found myself lost were the times when I later realized I was most sure of my actions and least sure of my aims. This proper humility is something I lost and fight to recover every day. But every such later while looking back on the times I was lost, I have struggled with that sin so far from humility’s antithesis of pride: jealousy, for a girl so close to me in so many ways but so different in having found this humility in her fervent belief in justice and in mankind’s better angels. This tops the list of the many things that make me proud to have her as a sister. Family members are required to love one another unconditionally; it was just a pleasant surprise to be graced with a sister I could admire as well.

The best we have within us...

Mankind, look upon your creation and weep.

Every so often mankind does something so incredible that the question must be raised: have we achieved all that is possible to achieve? This question has been asked for such great creations as sliced bread, the polio vaccine, and dollar mug night (or insert favorite drink special here). Each time mankind has progressed further, and moved on to the next great invention or discovery. But each time there is a question mark, a pause, a reevaluation where we wonder anew if the limits have been reached. And each time that we stop to ask the question we have gotten that much closer to such a limit, making the question that much more relevant.

Today I have found evidence that we must ask this question again. According to my research, in the 1800s scientists made hoof and mouth disease a thing of the past (editor’s note: “research” was watching Blazing Saddles). The 1960’s saw the creation and popularization of doomsday devices with the power to end all life on the surface of the earth (ed.: Dr. Strangelove). And scientists have returned life to the deceased, giving us reason to believe death no longer must hold sway over man's destiny (ed: Young Frankenstein). Each time a legitimate case could be made that we can go no further, but each time we did and the results have been amazing. Aeroplanes, locomotive trains, and automobiles, to say nothing of this thing I hear of called the “personal computer”; I’m not sold on that last one, but we’ll see how it goes.

But today we sing praises for the pinnacle of human achievement. Today we survey the whole of human history and say to our ancestors "Yes, it was a struggle. Yes, we lost many in the wars we fought for this. Yes, we lost many in the peace still fraught with danger, for this. Yes, we waited generations for this. Yes.

‘But look now on our accomplishment and weep. Weep with joy, for the realization of our dreams. Weep, for your destruction and your salvation. Weep, and be born again into the glory of the future."

Yes, we have done it, satisfied all of mankind’s greatest hopes and dreams.

For today, I finally found it: Vanilla Coke Zero. The rest… is history.

Promise made, promise kept

So a week or so ago my youngest sister (who, having learned my method of avoiding choosing a favorite sibling, referred to herself as “your favorite almost-19-year-old sister”) extracted a promise from me that in exchange for baked goods that were to be shipped to me, I would dedicate a post to her. The moment of weakness seems even more absurd when the promised goods never materialized. I will, however, uphold my end of the deal if for no other reason than to make her feel guilty and possibly forget all those times I didn’t come through for her in the past.

Growing up I was a very solitary person, in the sense that most of my enjoyable activities were one-person things: reading, watching television, video games, drawing, and all of those all over again. That suited an introvert quite well, though, so it was never troublesome for me. As the years went by, though, various people started letting me know in different ways that even if social activities were things I needed to build energy to face, I did need to experience them. Parents trying to get me out with friends, or sometimes just to get me friends; random classmates, likely feeling guilty for usually only talking to me to ask for homework help, periodically asking me to spend time with them and their friends; the obligatory school social events that everyone was expected to attend; all of these started to let me know that maybe I should learn how to get along with people. Yet for all that these people taught me to identify the skills I needed, they didn’t teach me how to obtain them.

The first person to pierce the bubble was my littlest sister. In what has to be the most damning indictment of my childhood, this started with her watching me play my video games. She would come in and sit on the floor or climb on my (usually unmade) bed and we’d prop our feet up on my chair, and we would sit for a few hours as I tried to beat a game and she would basically cheer for me. At first I figured she was bored, that she needed something to do; watching the games had to be somewhat fun for a young child. Maybe at first that was true, but with the added “wisdom” of a decade for hindsight to clarify I can’t help but think that the real fun came from sneaking around the defenses of this confusing creature, the older brother.

The better a person knows and trusts another person, the more relaxed the person is around them. We all have multiple levels around which we construct our public persona, and that public persona may not correspond at all with the inner person. One of the things I envy most in a handful of my extroverted friends is the ability to drop their guard with anyone; I have never had that and am coming to grips with the fact that I never will. And even though as that awkward teenager I already had walls built, I didn’t feel threatened while playing a game in my room, even if this strange person was in there with me. And because of that, though my attention was divided, my sister got a better view of who I am (or at least was at the time, if that has changed) than almost anyone else.

But even having learned how great it can be to get to know someone that well, I got the better end of the deal. The walls were and are still there, but the more you leave them behind the easier it gets, and in spending time with my sister I learned what it was to have a good friend. More importantly, since she was a family member, I learned that friends will fight and be angry with each other, and perhaps feel sad or embarrassed because of each other (I’m guessing I embarrassed her more than the other way), but that need not end a friendship. And I learned (from both her and my other sister) that not even girls can understand other girls, so I should stop trying--useful knowledge.

Though it was initially just the games, eventually she would spend more time around me. We’d swim and play in the pool together. We’d fake wrestle at the top of the stairs (yes, we had to choose the most dangerous place; it was more convenient, being right outside our rooms) and wait for the dogs to run up and jump in the mix before we both devolved in laughter and resigned ourselves to have dogs lick our face for a few minutes. When I could drive, I would take her around town, especially during summer to head out and get snow cones. In time, I would find other friends. I grew into the pretentious teenager phase and started drifting away, then I grew out of that into the pretentious college student phase and the drifting continued, then I grew into the pretentious graduate student phase and I have no idea when that will end. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of that drifting and not getting to see her as much anymore, I still get the ridiculously goofy grin when I first see her, and it grows even bigger when I surprise her and get to see her recognize me and go from usual to excited to see me in about a second flat.

One of the moments in my life of which I am most proud was when, as a junior high school student, my sister had finally started whatever fake version of dating takes place around that age. She was cute and somewhat popular and probably could have had her pick of the school. But she had chosen the kind of goofy smart kid in the class, and she told me he reminded her of me. That didn’t last, and no one would have expected it to have lasted. And maybe one of the reasons it didn’t last was because he wasn’t good enough for her (he wasn’t, though admittedly I am biased against everyone on this matter). But I can’t think for too long about that without thinking of a shy boy about that age who hadn’t deserved his littlest sister’s affection either.