A Taste for Ambiguity

During the Buddhist study group meeting tonight, one of the participants had shared a very interesting view, namely that it can often be easier to 'vent' one's frustrations toward someone than it is to abide in the ambiguity of being with a person. I thought this was a very interesting and insightful point that bears some reflection. It points to the natural tendency people might have to try to slot people into convenient categories, perhaps out of a need to make quick decisions under pressure. Rather than linger on the often contradictory qualities of a person that make them 'hard to pin down', it might be best to develop a taste for the ambiguity of a person. It's in fact the case that in the majority of cases, there is never an absolute 'like' or 'dislike' of someone else, but it seems that we prefer clear-cut narratives rather than entertaining multiple possibilities about a person. I guess doing so reduces the anxiety of having to continually question or revise our understandings of a person, without the comfort of knowing that we have 'finally' known them completely or definitively.
   To take this topic a step further into the area of research: in education circles, it is currently the vogue to explore 'narrative' ethnography. I am even hearing something to the effect that humans are natural storytellers, and stories are much richer in content than many so-called 'traditional' analysis that we find in research and scholarship. The problem that I find with narrative is that it often goes the opposite route of reducing ambiguity to 'clear cut' morals and lessons, rather than staying in the ambiguity itself. Stories tend to structure things in a way that we can more or less see who we are encouraged to empathize with in a good light, whereas others might be viewed less favorably. It's sometimes necessary to 'problematize' our narratives, and that's where I think that it's important to practice being in paradox, rather than trying to escape it through a familiar pattern of acting out. In so doing, I might even learn not to feel bad about ambiguity and to not be afraid to challenge stories or 'explode' stories through a multitude of very different perspectives.