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| "Party Trick" by Fluff, 2008 from Wikimedia commons DO NOT try this at home or without adult supervision! |
Balanced Voices
By Judith Cullen
© 2015
Just when I think I have my feet planted firmly on the
ground, someone reminds me that I don’t and I am forced to confess the truth. I
am an Idealist: a person who is
guided more by ideals than by practical considerations. Sometimes I feel this marker is unfair, that
it posits a circumstance in which someone has to be either one or the
other. Some days and in some
circumstances I think I am much more the Realist: a person who uses facts and
past events, rather than hopeful feelings and wishes, to predict the future.
Is our
perception of ourselves that limited?
Can we only be one or the other? Or
are we in a continual balancing act between head and heart, a perpetual
weighing of concerns and needs versus our desires and dreams. All are essential to who we are and how we
get to where we are going as individuals, as nations, as humanity.
I admit that my
default is to the heart, but I am well acquainted and able to function earnestly with my head. All I have to do
is look around me to see that there are people far more pragmatic than myself,
and those much farther out in dreamland.
So, why does
this labeling bother me? It is because I
believe in balance, in respect, in loyal opposition.
It is because I believe that a world of realism would be a bleak place:
a world never able to look beyond what has happened and what is happening, to
what might happen. A world that never leaves "the box." Dull, dull,
dull! Yet, I readily admit that a world
of idealism is a world in which nothing would ever get accomplished, and
frequently the clearly evident would be ignored in favor of the wishfully hoped
for. When the Tiger is gnawing on your
foot is not the moment to deny that that Tiger exist.
