Middle Ground

Middle Ground

October, 2026

This morning, over a fresh cup of brew, I watched a video of a man fast asleep in bed. A cat showed up and dropped a dead mouse into the guy’s open mouth.  I laughed and shot coffee out my nose. 

 

It made me realize how rarely I laugh these days.  A news reporter we follow developed Bell’s palsy so half her face was paralyzed and smiling was impossible. She went on with her work in front of the camera, saying it was not a big deal because there was nothing in the news that was amusing.

I enjoy a contented look on my wife’s face, a well-stocked pantry and root cellar, a morning mist hanging over the pond—but there are days when smiling is a challenge and a good laugh seems in bad taste. 

I blame it on world events: endless wars, corrupt governments, inequality, climate disruption, AI without guardrails. A sense of impending doom is always ready to smother a moment of joy. But then I see the dog doing zoomies around the yard, fawns kicking up their hooves in sheer  exuberance, a four-year-old grandnephew asking why butterflies exist. Hope and hopelessness vie for the spotlight. 

Detachment from the news has advantages. “All will be well,” we say, as we leave for work, put the trash out on Tuesdays, and buy more stuff we don’t need. We use our routines to distract us from threats.

For most  Americans, working for a living is not optional.  A scrap of yellowed paper stuck to the frame of my office window has a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.” I could never put that wisdom into practice. The landscaping business we built owned me. 

Garrison Keillor said Thoreau was a cranky, bitter, contemptuous man who lived alone in the woods so he could think and write and turn a social deficit into a working philosophy. I get it. Withdrawal has appeal, and as Nora Waln wrote, “Trees give peace to the souls of men.” Time alone in the woods is a chance to gain perspective, but we can’t save the world by holing up among the oaks and hickories, tempting as it is.

Allowing ourselves to be consumed by the threat of economic collapse, inundated cities, or a world controlled by AI is enough to break anyone’s spirit, but being self-absorbed and ill-informed is giving a pass to the corrupt interests of corporate and political elites. 

Yesterday I walked out of a local grocery and into a blast of music. A sound system in the parking lot provided the background orchestra for a man with a saxophone. It wasn’t Kenny G but sounded nearly as good, and I felt a spring in my step as I made my way to the car.

There is middle ground, where we understand threats but don’t drown in them, where beauty is recognized and claimed with gusto, where we’re willing to join movements and speak out for the greater good when the need arises.  

The world as we know it stands at the threshold of massive change, much of it for the worse, some of it already irreversible. There’s a mist hanging low over the pond and a vocal squadron of killdeers knifing through it. We have reasons to fret and reasons to smile. Both need tending.