From an early age, we’re taught to think in binaries: good/bad, right/wrong, left/right.
We learn that you’re either the doctor or the patient, the care-giver or the care-receiver, the winner or the loser.
When I started working in broadcasting, colleagues talked about having “the power (producers) or the glory (presenters)”. Frankly, I’m not sure if that stands up.
Yet of course the real world doesn’t work like that. Doctors will become patients at some point in their lives. Care can be universally-required and mutually-dependent. Winning and losing could be thought of as an endless churn or cycle.
The BBC had a report into its political coverage arguing that British politics had gone from a “see-saw” (left v right) to a “wagon-wheel” of greens, nationalists and single issue groups.
We live in a multi-faceted, multi-dimension world and always have done, though the levels of complexity are arguably greater today than ever before in our history.
I’m always rather pleasantly surprised that anything manages to work at all, amid the backdrop of so many competing demands for our time and attention.
How miraculous the migrations of the birds in the skies and all the intricate movements, planned and unplanned, of all us animals on the planet too.
A friend recently told me about an American politician who asked himself when he woke up: “What good can I do today?”
It’s rather a good question really…