--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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