Our fascination with the extremes
I recently met a senior from my society during the morning walk. He had celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday with his family, who had prepared a PowerPoint presentation with photographs capturing his journey from childhood to the present. Half-jokingly, he said he was thinking of burying the document somewhere in the society lawns for a future generation to discover. A time capsule of sorts.
It was not long before our conversation turned to the extreme positions, and often the language, adopted by some of our esteemed residents on the WhatsApp groups while criticising the incumbent governing body. We have witnessed this for the past ten years and will probably continue to do so, irrespective of who occupies those positions. We had a hearty laugh when we realised that someone would probably have an objection even to his idea of burying the time capsule.
I continued with my walk, still thinking about our fondness for extreme positions, when a rather more literal version of the same thought presented itself. I soon came across a few delivery boys whizzing breezily past on their e-bikes. Some of them appeared barely old enough to possess a driving licence. The absolute chutzpah with which they negotiate the society roads has to be seen to be believed. It is not only these youngsters. Many older residents also seem to think little about the well-being of pedestrians sharing those roads.
But there is one thing I have frequently noticed on our roads. When approaching a bend, riders and drivers often swing towards the extreme right or left, sometimes straying onto the wrong side of the road. During my travels in Europe, I have often noticed the opposite - the discipline of staying on the appropriate side while negotiating a bend. As I walked, the words left, right and extreme stayed with me.
Extreme positions are visible in corporate boardrooms too. Juniors learn quite early in their careers that supporting the strongly held position of a powerful senior can sometimes be more advantageous than questioning it. Seniors, in turn, can become so entrenched in their views that adopting a middle path becomes difficult, even when it may eventually produce a better outcome. Business owners sometimes continue pursuing an idea long after the writing on the wall has become visible to almost everyone else.
The problem with an extreme position is not necessarily that it is wrong. Sometimes circumstances demand one. The problem begins when the position becomes more important than the purpose for which it was taken. A residential WhatsApp discussion is meant to improve the community in which we live. A road is meant to allow everyone to reach somewhere safely. A boardroom discussion should eventually help the business make a better decision. Yet, somewhere along the way, winning the argument can become more important than achieving the objective.
For much of my life, I associated left, right and centre primarily with politics. How naive I was. Apparently, left and right extend far beyond politics.
Life around us seems determined to make us choose sides. WhatsApp groups do it. Boardrooms do it.
Social media certainly does it. Sometimes even a bend in the road appears to demand that we choose an extreme. But must we?
Perhaps the middle is not always an unwilling compromise between two strongly held positions. Sometimes it may simply be the space from where we can see both sides clearly enough to decide where we actually need to go.
The writer is founder of Kala - Krazy About Literature And Arts, is an author, speaker, coach, arbitrator, and strategy consultant; Views presented are personal.
