Simple Solutions

Local election season is in high gear, and there's a tendency to slap labels on those seeking office, which may be a help but can also be a hindrance. Remember in high school, with too much homework due at the same time, you'd grab a Cliff's Notes version of one (or more) of the mandatory reading assignments and rationalize it with 'what's the harm?' 

Let's face it, it's not like they made cheat sheets for trig or chemistry like they did for Tolstoy, right? I look back and realize some (or more) of my English teachers had to know I was dialing it up and phoning it in. 

They figured, correctly, I'd argue, that the guy getting the short end of the deal was I, since I was depriving myself of actually enjoying and learning from some of the best of 20th-century American Literature. I'm probably still not caught up.

My point? That's the danger of the label and the drive-by analysis. All ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks. If you can reduce the world in which we live to a one-word political perspective that guides you, or how you would lead if chosen, I have a very different word to describe you, and it's a lot more accurate than you'd like. 

My point is that nobody eats just chocolate ice cream, or just vanilla, or just any single flavor at all. We see the world through a perspective developed by everyone we've ever met and ever known. We are all of those people, just not all at the same time.

We are the most complex organism on the planet, the crown of creation (with apologies to Marty and Paul), so it's silly and stupid to restrict yourself to one-dimensional thought, especially in a world as complex as the one in which we are living. 

We owned all the tools ourselves, but not the skills to make a shelf with. The Never Ending Now becomes a prison and not a sanctuary. Too late, we recognize the face of the jailer as our own.

-bill kenny