Opposites attract, it is said. These days, I suspect opposites attract all right, and bunched up around their opposite poles, are two groups: the totally apathetic and the absolutely certain.
The majority of us are less extreme, lumped in the middle somewhere, fence-sitters, undecided, waiting for more information to drift in and for the clouds of our doubt to clear -- waiting for something like clarity and confidence to bloom somewhere close to our decision-making abilities, our opinions, our beliefs.
Ignorance and apathy make mischievous, self-chasing twins that raise only dust clouds and smokescreens, when they can be persuaded to move at all. Their opposite forces, ego and conviction, sweat buckets to ensure knowledge and action both corner the market and are locked all the way down.
Me, I usually buzz and flit around the whole length and area of those poles of attraction with an armload of bald facts and bare opinions. Sometimes, I sport splashy, energetic layer cakes of logic, interest, fascination. Other times, frankly, I'd be hard pressed to come up with an eighteenth of a half-baked hoot about anything. Sometimes, bereft of answers and beaten down, I refuse to play at all, completely rejecting the Catch-22, damned if you do, damned if you don't, concept of play -- my own Kobayashi Maru.
Fence-sitting puts an uncomfortable crimp and crease in one's pants and fence-sitting apparatus, but it keeps the mind from being unduly, and prematurely, folded, bent, spindled, and mutilated -- a definite upside for those suffering from bouts of indecision.
However, I've been noticing that the effects of other people's activities are starting to crimp and crease my mind regardless, even if I'm motionless and straddling fences of my own making. But, as an American, I claim my birthright -- to shamble over to, and then carefully mount, the Sacred Fence of Shilly-Shallying and hedge as many bets as I like, over there, on the Hedge of Hesitation, on the Ledge of Potential Jumpers.