Even though health concerns in the early 2000’s associating soy milk with GMO’s and added sugar, and environmental concerns of monocultures decimating the American Plains have been debunked, I recently saw a message stenciled on the wall of prominent Philadelphia coffee house saying, “Never any soy.” The barista, too, confirmed that they “never ever served soy.” I avoided a crisis by ordering my misto with oat milk instead. My beverage that day was good. It turns out that I like oat milk. Whew. Crisis averted.
While I now enjoy the occasional misto with oat milk, the situation reminded me that it is possible to enjoy both soy AND oat milk in good health. As it turns out, the politics of a cup of happiness or healthiness are not mutually exclusive.
We are constantly drenched in messages from advertisers, educators, self-help gurus, religious groups, and politicians, telling us we only have two choices: their way or the wrong way. In fact, nearly every organization and media outlet we encounter insidiously suggests that there are only two possibilities. It has become popular for all of us to use this logical fallacy of either-or thinking. We feel pressured to select one or the other choice, believe one ideology or the other. We forget, of course, that there are always other options. We also forget that no one ideology solves every problem, nor is each of us just one thing. Human beings are complicated bundles of contradictions. AND it is possible to be those complicated bundles.
So, let’s take a moment to talk about conjunctions, please. Conjunctions are those spiffy little words in the English language that show relationship. “Or” suggests alternatives. “But” shows how words or ideas contrast. And then there is my favorite conjunction: “and.” It shows relationship and connection. It suggests the possibility that two things can exist at the same time without being exclusive. “And” is a connector, a joiner. It makes it possible to think bigger. AND, it makes me happy.