A Taste for Nuance at a Tender Age

I am convinced that most great works of the human imagination - whether in the realm of fiction/art/music or commentary on real life - are about paradox. We know some things are bad and some things are good; it's the teasing out of bad, good, and their interplay that make for fascinating stories and useful analysis. Moreover, most of the best comedy - particularly in film - is an exposure of some kind of culture clash, where the neighbors from East Timor have a cricket tournament with the relatives from Tennesee, or some such randomness.

But I wouldn't have expected a six-year-old to arrive so quickly at a similar conclusion. The other day, Ian volunteered:

"Daddy, opposites are kind-of alike."

Of course, I immediately asked him what he meant, and he pointed out the sweet-and-sour combinations in food, as a concrete example, with one or two others to follow.

(February, 2010)