Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Living In the Middle In a World of Extremes

"A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle." 
--Ian Fleming, British author

Smack dab in the middle. An equal number of folks above me and below me. Not cutting edge but instead most often middling in my ways and opinions and tastes and politics. This is where I usually land in this life. Find myself. Claim as home.

Somewhere in the middle.

And so my class rank on graduating high school was something like 600th out of 1,200 students at West Springfield, Massachusetts High School, a school that by the way is today ranked number 178th out of 395 high schools in the state. Which put it in the middle. Then I attended the University of Massachusetts, considered a middle safe pick for middle class students like me back then. I wanted to go to my first pick for graduate school, Harvard University, the tops of the top, the pinnacle, but I instead went to the middle of my three picks, Boston University, having been rejected by that crimson school in Cambridge. 

The middle. I always seem to return there.

My tastes tend to middle brow. What better place is there for dinner than in a well worn Main Street diner, parked on some urban street or a lonely stretch of rural road? When my local Sears Department store went out of business this year, the retail mecca I'd faithfully shopped at for all of my life, the land of Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, where I'd gotten my first credit card, bought my first TV: I shed a tear the day they closed their doors. Middle America did too. That's where America shopped.

My favorite place to visit? The mid-west of course, Minnesota to be exact, a second home where I've made lots of friends, where I rediscover every time I go there, a more balanced pace of life, certainly not as fast or frantic as the east coast. A middle way of life. Minnesotans speak of an attitude of "Minnesota nice", and do so without a tinge of irony. Midway between the coasts? This "middle-ish" guy loves to call it his second home, in the middle of the country.     

Politics is where I get in real trouble. In the middle.

I am not an over the top lefty liberal, a cold brew coffee drinking, MSNBC addict who's crying out "IMPEACH NOW!" at the top of my lungs. Nor am I a far righty conservative, a Fox News watching acolyte who's convinced climate change is a hoax and that the current commander in chief can do absolutely no wrong. Being in the middle ideologically often brings derision, even contempt from both sides, proof that in this current time in history, politics has been pretty much hijacked by the extremes, the way out ends of the ideological spectrum. That's sad because the truth is that most Americans identify themselves as political moderates. That the answers to our current civic woes probably lie somewhere in the middle ground of compromise.

The middle. 

Even religion is caught these days in extremes of thought and practice. Some folks of faith would be more than happy to take their cherished beliefs about life and then impose them on the populace as a whole, even though we live in a religiously diverse land of many faiths and of no faith too.

Last week hundreds of conservative American religious leaders took out a full page ad in the national USA Today newspaper, asking America to pray for the President, a seemingly noble effort led by Franklin Graham, Billy's son. But of this, Graham said, "When the Mueller report came out, instead of moving on to something else, they’re continuing to attack the president. I’m just burdened for him and his family that God would somehow protect him and get him through this.”

Wait. Shouldn't all people of faith in fact be praying for all of our leaders, not just one select person? Pray for all of those office holders on the left wing and the right wing and the middle wing too? Does Graham actually believe that God plays favorites in politics, is of one narrow extreme ideological stripe?

Yup. No middle ground there.

Me? I'm taking my place and staking out my turf right here in the middle, unashamedly, because that is where most humans live most of the time. Because in order for there to be extremes, there needs to be a middle, to keep both sides in check, to keep things in balance, to save us from ourselves and our more extreme beliefs and ways.  

The middle. That's where I am. That's where I'll be.  And you?





    
  

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