I have been using Maybe Logic since I was, oh say, 3-ish. Seriously. I can give that age because I can remember thinking about stuff since then. I wonder what kind of different backgrounds bring so many of us to the same viewing lens. My parents divorced when I was like 2. I think divorce has been one of the healthiest aspects of my upbringing. Divorce gave me two parents that I continued to love, although they didn’t love each other.

Divorce gave me multiple sides to a story given by many adults (authorities) that I loved/respected.

Later in life, I’d be waitressing at an IHOP listening to a Senior Citizen customer telling me about how terrible movies are today. He’d complain that in the old days, you could always tell who the good guys were and who the bad guys were, and the good would always win in the end. I bet his parents never got a divorce. I thought of how I loved exactly the opposite of that – movies with intricate complexities that blurred the lines between good and evil and helped you empathize with everyone and cheer for nobody. Later, I would fall madly in love with Kurt Vonnegut.

Earlier in life, I fell happily in love with William Blake: his Songs of Innocence & Experience and everything in between. Even earlier than that, I’d find that I loved the Tom & Jerrys and HeMans & other cartoon episodes in which classic opponents came to cooperate and enjoy each others’ company for a little while.

All the characters in my life were always sometimes very shitty and sometimes completely amazing. If I shut them out on account of the shitty, I’d have missed out all the amazing. And lucky for me, when your 3, you don’t even consider the possibility of shutting out those you love. Now I’m 31; I consider it.

I consider the long history of great memories I would never have had I been less forgiving of some people – had I the classic addiction to a clean line between the black and white – had I the balls/knowledge that shutting out was even possible. Thank God and The Devil and Nothing and Everything and Anything In Between that I didn't know better/worse & therefore have those memories!!!

Now I find myself ambivalent and indifferent. Both of these words are defined in ways that may seem negative or unhealthy, psychologically. But with a little maybe logic, maybe . . .

Ambi = both

Valence = strength, capacity

Having the capacity or strength to weigh both sides of a position/emotion, etc. . . maybe.

Then, indifference is always very closely related to apathy. However, if you can empathize with both sides enough to see little difference between separating the two, it is strength of emotion rather than lack thereof that dissolves concern over outcomes.

The indifference principle sees that each possible event should have an equal probability. Perhaps a person who moves through ambivalence to indifference has the capacity to imagine and understand all possible emotions and perspectives of all parties enough to feel that all joys and sorrows will balance out in the oneness we’re all in afterall. Kind of like one who can come through experience and still have as much love and hope as he did when he was innocent.

I think this may not be so psychologically/emotionally unhealthy, really. Apparently, despite how ambivalent/indifferent I claim to be, I’m still pathetic enough to want to shake some of the negative connotations that may come with those two nice words