Into the In-Between

Silly as it may sound, a Peloton yoga class was where the concept of "both/and" first landed for me. Deep in pandemic quarantine, Chelsea Jackson Roberts was one of my best virtual friends. On the floor of my bedroom, in the midst of a power class, Chelsea told me to be the both/and. It was one of my favorite classes, and as I took it over and over the words "both/and" settled deeper and deeper within me. Off the mat, I began noticing how often myself and others opted for an "either/or" mindset instead. Both/and thinking both acknowledges the in-between, sticky and uncomfortable as it is, and embraces it.

In some ways this whole Jesuit Volunteer year has been a great big in-between. I'm past college while still in time-bound, program-led constraints. I'm not quite a staff member at the agency where I work yet definitely am more than just the average volunteer. I'm settling into a new city and unsure if it's for the long-term. And in walking alongside the youth I serve as they encounter challenging situations, confronting social issues in conversations, learning how to live with new people and in a new place – I’ve no doubt discovered that life is full of nuance and complexity on measures that extend well beyond my small individual experience.

Often when found in an in-between phase in our individual experiences, the goal is to get out of it: to find the next job, plan the next move, do the next thing. The true challenge is found in the larger communal experiences of life; when faced with things, people, systems we can't control: there is no "next thing" to be done, no way to get out of it. Hence the labels of good/bad, right/wrong, yes/no – it's a way of fabricating control. The black and white helps us to make sense of things, but where did we as a society come to the conclusion that gray is a bad thing?

Enter Parker Palmer’s “tragic gap”: that space between “the hard realities around us and what we know is possible – not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes”. I think this year I am standing smack in the middle of it. Palmer himself observes that “As you stand in the gap between reality and possibility, the temptation is to jump onto one side or the other…[but] the gap is where all the action is” (“If Only We Would Listen”, The Sun Interview). Each day in my work I am witness to harsh reality and trauma and pain, but I am also witness to accomplishment and friendship and great joy. I feel hugely discouraged but I also carry deep hope. I am not always sure which systems and policies to put my faith in, and which to contest. It feels like there are no clear answers to any problems anymore. It’s taken nearly eight months of fighting these internal battles of cross-challenging thoughts marching in my head for me to finally realize: the battles themselves are the whole point. Maybe I’m not meant to resolve these issues into neat goods/bads, rights/wrongs, yes’s/no’s. Maybe I’m meant to sit, really sit, in this in-between.

I’ll admit I’ve found myself in a deeper in-between than I ever anticipated when I signed up for this program, but whether to view it as an either/or (neither/nor) or a both/and is still a conscious choice of perspective that I get to make. Neither/nor says "I'm stuck, I can't do anything, this is maybe a waste of time". Both/and says "there are multiple sides to this experience, maybe some of them are conflicting, I can hold these complexities while continuing to move forward".

Both/and recognizes that if I wait for everything to be aligned and make sense, I'll be pretty much waiting for the rest of my life. Because in reality, isn't every phase of our life in some way an in-between? Won't there always be that thing yet to be done, room still to grow, distance to be traveled?

Neither/nor urges me to do the next thing to get out of this phase; both/and invites me to venture deeper into the grayness and see what is yet to be found.