Life is not binary

As soon as I wrote that title,  I realised that it could easily be refuted because we are either alive or dead, eh? So, I will start by saying that I am talking about life, not death, and life is not binary.

I started thinking about this when a friend phoned to say that she was running late and wouldn’t be able to get to the gym for our workout at 9.30. I realised that she was meaning that she would get there at 10.30 for Stretch Class. Nothing very profound so far, but then she  said, “It’s 9.05, I’m not going to be able to make it by 9.30.”  My instant reaction was, “You’ll get there when you get there.” Given this was the second week in a row she was potentially bailing on the gym workout, she got the subtext and arrived before 10am.

That gave me 20 minutes of quiet time on the exercycle to reflect on why she may have thought that 9.30 was an all or nothing concept. Surely she realised that at least one of us was usually late, or sometimes early. Hmm, being late is “bad” and being early is “good”. Binary thinking again.

Why does it matter that our culture is heavy on polar opposites, binary absolutism? Why do I hate this thought culture so much? Mostly it is probably because it is antithetical to my personality type, ENFP.  For me, life has no absolutes, everything is swirling in a fantastic spiral galaxy and at any moment it could reverse its spin or rotate on its axis or cartwheel across the cosmos scattering sparkling stars.

It matters so much because of the damage it causes. How many overweight people have “fallen off the wagon” because they were “bad” and ate that piece of chocolate and then gone on to binge on “naughty” food. What’s “over” and “under” weight anyway? What’s “fat” and “thin”? What’s so awesomely significant about a BMI of 30 that triggers the label  “obese”.

As a teacher, I am continually confronted by students who believe they are “dumb” and therefore cannot learn. Equally frustrating are students who believe they are “smart” and do not need to learn. All this is compounded by teachers who buy into the binary labels and use them to justify perpetuating a system is which students “fail” because they are dumb or “pass” because they are clever and in which no-one learns very much at all.

We are not rich or poor, beautiful or ugly,  privileged or under-privileged, developed or under-developed, sane or mad, law-abiding or criminal. At any moment in  time we are somewhere on a spectrum which has no end points. We can be really early or disastrously late but we could be even earlier or perhaps a little more or less late.

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