Black? White? Both? Other colors?

An e-mail exchange over the last 2 days with "anonymous" got me thinking about ambiguities and wanting to make things neat.

Let me try to explain.

I don't know how consciously this happens or if the recognition of it is any more conscious than its development but there comes a time, when we've had some amount of life experiences, that we have what we would describe as 'fully-fleshed out opinions or ideas' on the stuff that life is made of. As time passes, perhaps sometimes we get used to thinking that way. Then something happens and you're forced to revisit what you think - not because you necessarily need to change your thought since life has thrown you a curve ball. That's not what I have in mind. What I'm thinking of perhaps is more along the lines when in the course of an ordinary conversation one thing leads to another and the next thing you know you're deliberately contemplating an opinion, an idea, a belief, a value, a habit of living perhaps.

I tend towards "in-between" as a default position when it comes to most things. I don't mean non-committal or balanced but I'd like to think that where I end up is in a zone that doesn't want to necessarily see things as black or white. In other words, I'd like to think that I'm comfortable with ambivalence. That, unlike my desire to have any motifs on my bedding facing the head or everything on my desk at a right angle, that when it comes to meaningful life stuff I'm okay when things aren't neat.

And I am.

However, when I try to express my opinions or thoughts I try to neaten them up. I beat the "gray" or "other colors" out of them and package them as "black or white". Why do I/we do that? Are we so hung up on conventional forms of rationality that our communication patterns center around that? Or perhaps it's the way language works - a tool that was intended to resolve uncertainty. I'd say perhaps it's the way language is - a tool of the brain that doesn't quite capture what the heart feels or the gut senses. But then again I've read beautiful poetry that does exactly that. So perhaps it's me - or us if you dwell in the same space on this.

Why and when do we rush to neatness? I'll speak for myself. Is it that I want to seem more sure than I am? Or rather, I want to disguise what others might recognize as uncertainty when it really is a more solid certain than I'm letting on.

Before I go on, I'm not angsting. Just thinking through a train of thought and blogging about it.

So where was I before that disclaimer?

Yes...why is it that when we can dwell in what seems like ambiguity or be comfortable in complexity that our conversation or presentation of those ideas tends towards neat matrices of 2x2s or something like that?

I usually end up back in the complexity but why the impulse to start off neat? Any thoughts?


PS - special note to 'anonymous'(although I think that ought to be 'n-anonymous'): Thanks for always engaging and keeping me engaged.