Malconent in the Middle

I guess I don't have as much to crab about as I thought I might, lo these many years since I started blogging. That was the reason I started to blog - to get my bitch on, and dump it squarely somewhere so my husband wouldn't have to listen to a constant stream of complaint.

But looking back over the posts I've made -- I haven't really complained all that much. A real "Huh." moment for me, actually.

Dare I say that must mean I'm...happy...? Ugh. For a post-modern, slow-maturing, aimless, caught-between-Gen's X-and-Why-doesn't-really-fit-in-either Gal, that's quite a shocking realization.

I practically ™'d Miserable Dark Girl.

sigh. I guess I'm like most people -- much cooler in my own imagination than I am in actual living color. Much less a dweeb, much hipper, more insightful and deep, than anyone out there gives me credit for... Heh. Right.

But one thing I can say, without reservation, pride or prejudice, is that I think by myself, for myself. Sure, I pick up as much imput as I am humanly able -- and I don't stick to one source, either; I crib from everything left, right and center that I can find.

Once I've let the mash stew for a bit... I form my opinion. Which usually ends up coming out something along the line of, "Well... I see both sides -- I really do and can honestly say I think the truth...is somewhere in the middle."

I'm so middling it's probably the topmost reason I'm so damn boring.

Conflict in the Middle East? I see both sides, I really do...and I think the truth is somewhere in the middle -- but only one side might be willing to step to the "middle" if their damn dance partner wasn't so willing to blow it's own children up as a statement that they don't particularly like the style of music.

American politics: Left? or Right? I see both sides... I really DO (and have at various times in my life been on both of them) but I think the truth is somewhere in the middle -- only, politics is so much more fun when we can gain power by demonizing the other side and placating huge swathes of complacent, uninformed people with meaningless platitudes in order to maintain that power! (and yeah, I think it happens on the left and the right.)

Okay...here's another tough one. Abortion: For? or Against? Heheheheh. I guess you know what I'm going to say. I see both sides... I REALLY do, and though it horrifies me personally, and I don't think I'd have one myself (can't really say, as I've never been pushed into that particular corner, and don't really WANT to be, thankyouv,v,much) we've traversed too long a road to try to repeal Roe v. Wade now and I cannot, would not in good conscience impose my moral stances against someone's own right over their own body. It's so impossibly sticky, that my stance is the best "lesser of two evils" I can hope to ever come up with...

See? Middling. Horribly, horribly middling. But it's the best I can do. And I'll tell you, it IS a stance, the middle. Some people might say that it's no stance at all...that you either have to be right or left, pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel, for Abortion or against it... And maybe they're right.

But I don't think so. (Lookit. You've GOT to have enough weight in the middle to keep the seesaw from clunking down hard one side or the other...s'all I'm sayin') I think that mind-set is what got the world into this kind of trouble in the first place.

Look. If there's a God, a Creator (and I, personally, believe) then that God gave the human creation one very precious gift: Free Will. Left it up to us, to muddle along as best we could in a divine love so intense that it would rather we evolve, slowly and painfully -- maiming, warping and killing ourselves along the way to finding the path to not just surviving...but THRIVING -- than to ever IMPOSE upon us, like a dictator or tyrant, its own Will.

Some think that is the height of uncaring, dispassionate, ambivalent feeling. And sometimes... I do too. Sometimes I think, Ah, God...can't you come down here and make us all get along? Make all the paths straight? Make all the wrongs right?

Then I think... do I really want to be an automaton? It's like in my parenting -- which I do unevenly, sporadically and to very mixed results, I might add (my kids are great thru no fault of my own, btw) -- though it kills me, almost literally, I have to let them make some mistakes and (more importantly) to face the consequences all on their onesies if they are going to learn, grow and survive.

But I'm only human. I still stick my hand out in front of them when we are somewhere high up and they step too closely to the edge... (they are 9 and almost-12) I still remind them -- every single time they take a bike ride -- to watch carefully at all road crossings. I still -- God love 'em -- clean up their more minor messes -- both literal and figurative -- for the umpteenth time...because I'm not omnipotent, omniscient or omniwise. (I made that last word up) I have myself all fooled up that I actually possess a modicum of control.

I can get away with "imposing my will"... because I don't have all those nifty "omni-" gadgets at my disposal. I can still claim ignorance for meddling and keeping my "creation" from learning valuable lessons the old-fashioned way... thru trial and, unfortunately, error.

In God's big arena, though, error sometimes has devastating, far-reaching consequences.

But it ain't like we haven't been warned or (in human-parent vernacular) nagged sufficiently either. Can we really claim no culpability in the whole mess?