“Where In-Between Lives” exists as more of an ongoing personal growth project than anything else. The final year of my forties consisted of pandemic-driven isolation and an unhealthy obsession with the daily news cycle. The accelerating polarization of our world became unavoidably obvious, leaving me feeling battered, bothered, and disheartened. The normative first step in discussing hot button topics and non-mainstream ideas seems to have become the drawing of battle lines — where you are expected to be pro whatever or con, where you’re either for us or against us. When one side takes up an extreme position, the other side, almost by necessity, must do the same to survive. If we expect to have any chance of evolving beyond shouting matches, we need to stop defining people solely by their position on an issue or membership in some category and appreciate people as people who happen to have varied beliefs and life experiences. Civility needs to be reintroduced into vigorous debates. While we will probably never sway those who just want to be angry at the world, I have great hope that cultural differences, and the larger society that defines them, can move back to a more central, and perhaps neutral, place of informed discussion, respectful disagreement, and hopefully positive growth. Naivete? Probably, but an uphill climb is never an excuse for complacency.
Through having real people chronicle their own life events, “Where In-Between Lives” will invite the viewer to challenge his or her own belief system by moving a construct from the abstract to something more concrete and tangible that impacts another human being in very meaningful ways. My goal is not to push a particular agenda, although I certainly have one. Through video and photographic media, I hope to encourage people to embrace uncertainty as a natural part of the human condition and to view beliefs as dynamic, constantly shaped and revised according to new data. People need a space to be wrong about things, to ask questions, and to grow as a result.
AHA! A radical left liberal?! Liberal? Mostly yes. Radical? No. We lose as a society and a species when we refuse to hear and understand respectfully expressed views, no matter how extreme or different from our own. In life, little is fair and the spoils often go to the side with the biggest stick or the most money, The decision of how you choose to participate, however, remains just that, a choice. In the time I have left, I choose to try to meet as many new and interesting people as I can and share those experiences here.
If you are interested in being featured, please check out our Ponder Prompts, Current Projects, and WIBLA pages for general areas of interest. Feel free to reach out through our Contact Us page if you feel you have an important lesson for me and others that does not fit neatly into categories listed. Most importantly, if you have a question about a topic or an opinion, please feel free to contribute in the appropriate areas. I only ask that people be respectful.
