Shades within shades of gray

Oct. 21, 2004

Dear Ken,

If you're a political candidate, you can lie, you can pander to special interests, you can be clueless. But there's one thing you can't do. You can't have it both ways.

Whatever "it" is, supposedly, having it both ways is against the rules. It's inconsistent. It's downright immoral.

In those maligned candidates' defense, I'm standing up to say you can have it both ways. I've had it both ways most of my life.

It all started when I was a toddler and my daddy was helping fight the Korean War. Since it was just me and Mom against the world, she spoiled me. For instance, I grew up drinking chocolate milk. I didn't like the white stuff, but add some Bosco chocolate syrup and milk became ambrosial.

It is possible to dislike milk but like chocolate milk. I was having it both ways. The pattern was set.

As a pubescent baseball player, my hitting was even worse than my fielding. But one game, the manager put me in to bat against a pitcher who had a no-hitter going in the last inning. I slapped a single to right field and broke the pitcher's heart.

I felt bad and good. I was having it both ways.

Take girls. For the longest time they scared me even though I loved being near them. Loving the same creatures who scared me was having it both ways.

This ambivalence naturally disappeared once the girls started becoming women. Those curves, those lips, those laughs. But who among the us would say the state of being married isn't scary sometimes?

Life is changeableness, choosing to eat a Bartlett pear one day and creme brule the next, listening to Johnny Cash one night and Debussy the next, vacationing at Machu Picchu and Disney World.

To feel only one way about most anything may be a symptom of not feeling at all, of denying the mystery of being alive. We all hate war, don't we? It's just hard to believe since there's always one being fought somewhere. We all love God, don't we? But witness the un-Godly things we do.

Human beings are complicated. We sometimes laugh at a funerals and usually cry when a new being is born. We understand quantum physics -- at least some of us do -- which holds that the world is made of particles that sometimes behave like particles and sometimes behave like waves. At the most elemental level, the world has it both ways.

Having it both ways means we can be both successful and treat others and the environment with respect. Having it both ways means we can accept the differences between other people and ourselves. Having it both ways means moral certitude is not the province of any one religion but can be found with much searching in the region of the heart.

If you can't have it both ways, shades of gray don't exist. The world is black and white. There's no mystery, no fog, no variations on a theme, no chocolate milk.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.