DrDuke's Journal

Wishy-washy or Yin-Yang?

 Recently, one of my friends here on DS accused me of being "anti natural", against aroma therapy and other natural healing methods which are claimed to have been healing the ill for thousands of years.

 I am not against natural things, not for any "man-made" things.  I try to take all things on a case by case basis.  Even then, I very rarely take an extreme position.  I used to think I was a "wishy washy" person with no backbone because I always could see some of both sides of any issue.  But after I began parenting my children and reading books about how to be the best parent, I decided to think of it more as Yin and Yang, finding the balance point between extremes, rather than as wishy washy.

 Even something like tobacco, in my opinion, can have good points as well as bad.  Surely it is bad for anyone's long term health to smoke a pack a day or more of modern cigarettes.  But I suspect that native Americans, using a peace pipe and treating the tobacco leaf as a sacred "herb" did not often take it to such extremes.  I don't think the smoke was physically beneficial to the health of their lungs, but as a social, mental, or spiritual thing, the relaxing feeling etc was probably a good thing.  

Some people see tobacco as EVIL, addictive, nasty, stinky, etc.  Others take the opposite extreme and love it.  I am not exactly "middle of the road" but I am certainly not at either extreme.  I have my issues with companies that package and sell tobacco, especially if they market a brand for kids or manipulate the nicotine content for maximum addictiveness.  But that is a problem with humans and marketing, greed and profit, etc and not an inherent property of the tobacco plant.

 Anyway, the same applies to almost all other areas of my life.  On parenting, some books encouraged extreme discipline, spanking, making infants feed on a set rigid schedule, and claimed that any other method of parenting would lead to evil teens and adults.  Other books said the exact polar opposite, that we should let children grow and learn with as little guidance as possible, we should feed the infant when it is hungry etc and that any other way would lead to teens and adults who needed therapy and were mentally unballanced etc.  I suspect that surely the balance point somewhere in between the extremes is a better way to raise children, and that the balance point for some children and some parents is not exactly in the same place as it is for other children or other parents.

 So, after a time, I realized that I do have very strong opinions on many things, but that my strong opinion is that the middle of the road is usually best and that neither extreme is likley to be good.  Maybe this is also tied to the fact that I don't mind warn coffee instead of scalding hot, and that I also can tolerate drinking room temperature water, I don't always need ice cubes in my "cold" drinks.  On the other hand, I do love to jump out of a sauna or 104 degree hot tub and roll in the snow, of to plunge into an icy stream after doing hard work in the hot sun.  My core temperature seeks the balance while my skin experiences the extremes.