When Wants "Eclipse" Sanity

No one's sane. I know that. Does it mean we're all insane? I don't think so. I just know that no one is actually ever in their "right mind." We're all just a little crazy because there's always something we want to do and it never seems to be what's "right." Why? Who the heck knows... Anyway, "want" clouds your judgement; passion overrides reason. Therefore, if we want something, we cannot be sane.

Let's try it this way: "The law," as we learned from Aristotle, "is reason free from passion." (The real quote from Politics, of course, is more often translated as: "The law is reason unaffected by desire." But the common idiom works well enough.) So, now we start deducing:

1. We know that the law is reason, according to Aristotle.
2. Sanity is defined as "soundness of judgment."
3. "Soundess of judgement" can be otherwise called rationality or reason.
4. If sanity is reason, then the law is sanity free of passion.

Dang -- okay, so my philosophy classes didn't pay off so well. (Sorry, Mom and Dad!) The point I was trying to make is that sanity is free of passion, so now the English major in me is taking over: Find a law or lawmaker that you think is free of passion and prove me wrong...I dare you. (How's that for an argument? Haha!)

Really, we're all a little crazy. We all want things that we know aren't good, or aren't right, for us. Like tonight, we took 18 of the 14U and 16U girls out to see Twilight's Eclipse. Why? Well, me and my co-head coach wanted to see it, the girls wanted to see it...so, we figured, why not make it a fun girls' night?

Wrong! I spent half the movie sitting in the aisle to keep the 16s quiet. The 16s! The 14s behaved well enough -- at least, when they talked it was in hushed whispers -- and, really, they just couldn't stop texting long enough to sit through a 2-hour movie. But my 16s... Dear god, the mouths wouldn't stop. And those mouths are BIG. I don't know how many times I said to them, "Do I need to take you out for a minute?" I've never given so many hateful looks in my life! And, honestly, who has to threaten a 16-year-old with time-out -- in a public setting?!

It even got to a point where, (**SPOILER ALERT!**) after Bella finally kissed Jacob, one of my 16s turned to me and said, "Okay, that's all I wanted to see, you can take me out now." What nerve, right?!

Now, putting all my angst aside, I'm just disappointed that my girls couldn't behave better in a movie theatre full of people who paid a whole lot of money to see a movie on opening night. (I mean, I don't know about you, but $10 is a lot of money to me!) Honestly, though, I should've known better. I know my girls. I know that this is how they act. Why did I think that they could behave for 2 hours in a dark room when I can't get them shut up and focus for an hour and 15 minutes on the softball field? ...I think the answer is: because I wanted them to. And I wanted to believe they could.

In the end, it's not about the movie. I want a lot from those girls. And I want to believe that they can do so much. But these wants keep getting in the way of my (better) reason. Is it so bad for me to want that they give 100% at practices and during games? Is that so wrong? (I don't think so.) Maybe it is because they can't. Is it wrong for me to want the girls to do something they can't? I don't know. I'd like to see them at least try; to, at least, care enough and give 99.99% when that last 0.01% just isn't attainable. Is that crazy-talk? Sure it is. I know that! But is it the sort of crazy-talk that makes me a good coach? Or a bad one?

I don't know. I just don't anymore. I've still got that big decision to make this week. And tonight's showing at the movie theatre didn't help at all. In fact, it added on more things to consider and more decisions to make. Last night's practice went alright, though. The big rule of the night was "no speaking unless spoken to by a coach, or unless you're communicating a play on the field." They did pretty well with that, oddly enough. But all the girls know what's up; they know the decision I have to make. They know that their performance and attitude right now is on the line...for things much bigger than winning and losing a game.

I'll be honest, though, they know about the decision I have to make this week. What they don't know is that there's an even bigger decision I've been prompted to consider between now and August; and they shouldn't know because it would hurt them so much to even think that I have to think about these sort of things, but sometimes I wish they did know. I wonder if they'd try harder or just give up. I wonder if they'd push to find that 99.99% even when they knew that they just can't get that last 0.01%. Like I said in my last post: I wish I could say more, but I just can't.

I know I'm crazy. I know it's 10 til midnight and I'm writing this stupid blog that only 9 people read...well, more like 7 or 8, discounting the hits I get from myself. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. So it goes.