Universal Ambivalence

My gift for this morning, as I finished reading the morning paper, was a family of young blue jays in the ornamental crabapple tree that sprawls over our deck.

For all practical purposes these "babies" are full-grown. But they still want their mama to feed them. To make their "needs" known, they sit on a branch, flutter their wings, and cry pathetically. Of course, the parent birds respond - and these now-fledged birds manage to prolong their childhoods. At some point however, the parent birds will cease to hear them - and the young birds will have to fend for themselves.

How like all of us! The yearning to be cared for - and fierce independence - competing for attention within all of us. Small children declaring they can "do it themselves." And the very elderly who resist the efforts of others to assume care for them.

This inner tension does not even fall in the category of wanting "our cake and eating it too."  Ambivalence is a better description. We even see its effects politically. We demand smaller government and less taxation. And then cry foul when our streets are not maintained and our libraries curtail their hours.  We want to choose whether to wear helmets while riding motorcycles and demand the right to not spend a single penny on health insurance. But we expect medical care when we have been in an accident and that someone will pay for that care.

The list is long. Take care of me and guarantee my job security. Permit the wealthy 1% to engage in unfettered capitalism - but don't threaten my pension investments. Don't restrict my rights with building codes and regulations, but my neighbor had better mow his lawn or I will complain to the city.

Somewhere in the very midst of our ambivalence lie necessary solutions, created out of compromise and caring for the common good.

And those independent and feisty jays will function together in a loose community to help safeguard each other's welfare. I know I will hear them them from time to time during the remainder of the summer, their raucous calls announcing a threatening intruder.

Look out solitary hunters, such as owls and hawks.  If the jays go after you, they will  be determined to chase you away hungry!