Life is complicated. Many of us use this as a rationalization to avoid decisive action. This can leave us in a morass of moral confusion. If we a fine line a ledge, the slightest movement may result in profoundly different outcomes — such as falling of a ledge, or not. The difference between right and wrong may not seem much at times, but they are opposites. This poem is yet another meditation on the wisdom of relying or over relying on fine probabilities (statistics) versus qualitative certainties (moral knowledge). Modern society is inundated with statistical probabilities, such is the good foundation of much science. But, we can get lost in all the calculations of life. There is a good reason that calling someone “calculating” is not a compliment. My best practical suggestion regarding “life is complicated” and its ensuing confusion, is to simplify and focus on the many fewer things that you know for certain, that is, your basic values. Wile the whirled may be a swirl of confounding, by keeping a focus, a center around the fewer sure things, balance becomes reachable. May you find clarity and balance in this oft bewildering whirled.
That Fine Line
Can you tell
The deference
Between who and what
Matter and anti-matter
Creation and destruction
Between everything
That’s possible
And nothing
That you can do
Madder and anti-madder
The parent riffed between
Loving
And just
Scorn points
Down with stuff
And up with attitude
Getting awe this
And being
This
God presents
This fine line
Where you must
Live
Between distinction
And extinction
Between discreet
And excrete
Faith and certainty
The devil sells you an admission
To know where
Obscure plays
Between meaning and mean-ing
A rock and a hard place
Read and red
Between the lyin’s
Forever grasping
And never under standing
The deference
Of worship and warship
Some wear
Beyond the same owed ship
Every won occupies
