"Familiar"

       Getting out on the road this morning in my car, at a nearby stop sign I pondered freeways vs. city streets, and either way, it occurred to me that what we like is the familiar, the paths and routes we know, have used often . . . the familiar.

       And I wondered why we use and choose the word "familiar" to characterize such cases.  Of course, for the associations the word contains.  What is usually most close to us, most long term and far back in immediate personal relationship to us?  Our family members, who else!  And what better word to suggest any long-term unquestioned relationship in which the other seems to know us just about as well as we know the other.

       It's "familiar."