You can pick up one of the balls on the end, or multiple balls, and drop them and they will bang into the other balls and make them swing to the other side. Many times I think of heated topics and controversial issues like pendulums. It is so easy to be hit by something - information, experiences, conversations, etc. - and be swayed to the other side, especially if you don't have much prior knowledge regarding the topic of interest.
So often there is the notion of black and white, left and right, good and bad. The stark contrasts are seen in politics, economics, religion, social issues, animal welfare, health and more. Are you a republican or a democrat? Do you support welfare/unemployment benefits or not? Are you religious or atheist? Do you support gay marriage? Are you vegan or an avid meat eater? Are you a health nut or fat?
I think that it's human nature to want to identify yourself with one side or the other because you are then provided with a support system, a group of people that you have something in common with. However, we must realize this tendency to categorize because it leads to blindness. When we categorize ourselves on one side or the other, we run the risk of not seeing an important issue the other side brings up or dismissing the other side's idea that could be brilliant. Also, I have found from personal experience, that it is very easy to be on one side your whole life and get tired of it and go whole-heartedly to the other just for a change and because of the excitement of new ideas.
I identify with the swinging pendulum because eventually, the swinging stops. The balls stop right in the middle where they started, but have the experience of being on both sides.
My mom has been preaching the concept of moderation to me for ever but I'm just now beginning to realize what she means. There are three areas of my life where I am noticing the pendulum reaching that equilibrium, that moderation.
The first area is in political views - both fiscally and socially. I took a political alignment test at the beginning of my senior year of high school. I scored pretty far on the conservative side. After being exposed to so many fiscal and social issues in my social justice based class, I swung pretty darn far to the left. However, I'm now realizing that I don't want to identify myself with either side because I disagree with parts of both! I would consider myself a moderate - not in that I don't care about the issues, but rather because I have a better understanding of both sides and agree and disagree with different parts.
The second area is in health. At the beginning of high school, I felt very fat. Due to extreme exercising and freaky health eating, I lost a ton of weight. I was about the same size for a couple years while I played volleyball. Looking back now, I considered myself to be obsessive. After volleyball ended senior year, I wasn't quite as health conscious. In fact, I swung kind of far to the "what I eat and how much I exercise really doesn't matter" side. That didn't last too long, because it's not my nature to be unhealthy and inactive. But the mental aspect was there - that I was free from any chains that had previously kept me enslaved to my weight and body image and I could do whatever I wanted. I've been extreme and obsessed over my health, and I've also resigned myself to not caring. Where I'm at now is a wonderful place. I'm passionate about health and care about my body tremendously, but I also realize that caring about my body means that I do things in moderation. Both sides to the extreme are incredibly detrimental to overall health.
The last and most recent area relates to animals. Before this class, I was so against being vegetarian I laugh about it now. I was one of the people that would respond to vegetarian related comments saying confidently, animals were created to be eaten, and it's a sin to abstain from that. With the amount of information I have been exposed to over the last ten weeks, I have often swung to the opposite end of the spectrum. At the beginning of the quarter, sometimes I would get out of class and not even want to eat food at all. I now realize that the issues surrounding eating animals are so much more complex than just being labelled a meat eater or a vegan. There's an infinite number of levels of moderation in between. Currently, I don't eat chicken, pig, cow, duck, etc. and don't really see myself changing in the future. However, I do occasionally eat fish. I've had a hard time justifying this to myself. Sometimes I am put into situations where eating fish is the best available option. I have an incredibly fast metabolism and get hungry so easily, to the point of where I am debilitated if I don't get substantial food, and if there's no other source of protein in sight, I usually resort to fish. I'm still exploring that issue because I know that it is just as multi-faceted as the other issues of meat eating. Additionally, I'm not a vegan. I can't explain why other than the fact that for me at this point in my life, it doesn't feel right. I don't know why, it's just my gut instinct. I can certainly cut down on my dairy products and eggs, which I do, but I don't see myself completely cutting them out of my diet.
What I'm noticing is that I'm a lot like the pendulum. I see both sides in many different lights, but I eventually end up somewhere in the middle. However, I do not mean that by ending up in the middle I am complacent whatsoever. By being in the middle, I mean that I am pretty moderate in my views and personal philosophies. That doesn't mean that I'm not still exploring all of the sides that make up an issue. Furthermore - there's not just two! Perhaps a more accurate analogy instead of a pendulum would be a circling tetherball. I am still in the process of exploring all of the sides of the world, and I continue to do that for the rest of my life. Also, it's very possible to be on one end of the spectrum and still understand both sides. Who know's where my ball will come to rest in the future - for I've only seen a small fraction of the world.
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