In attempting to succintly state my beliefs about various things, recently, after some frustration, an analogy finally came to me that allowed me to sum things up nicely: there's an old, old question that goes something like: "is the glass half empty, or half full?" What occurred to me is: said glass is, in fact, both half empty and half full. The importance of this, to me, is: it's easy to fall into a pattern of "black and white thinking". The truth of a given something, though, may well be too complex for "black and white thinking" to accomodate. Far from being an excuse for "fence-straddling"; vascillation; intellectual laziness; the truth of this seemingly simple - observation, I suppose - requires one to put even more thought into evaluating the facts surrounding a given situation; and, evaluate all the facts of a matter on their own merits, without personal bias or preconception. I thank all those who have helped me finally realize this. And, I pray that in the future, I will be more dilligent and careful in my assesment of any situation or matter that I face or with which I find myself confronted.
