Ambiguity consists, perhaps, only of seven shades. But the tones and hues of ambivalence are so myriad and varied there's oftentimes no distinguishing one type from another.
Love and hate, for instance, co-existing in a single context in one person's mind. But the same two emotions, interestingly, may co-exist totally differently in the mind of another. Which brings me rather neatly to this IT worker from India, let's call him Jaswant, who earns his milk and cheese in Australia doing what he terms "bread and butter" work although the pay he receives is, by comparison, peanuts. Those are, almost literally, his words not mine.
Although it's interesting - and innovative - how he conceives work and reward - or the lack of it - as a metaphor for food, he certainly isn't the first, for terms like 'breadwinner', 'cash cow' and 'bringing home the bacon' are already legendary and, dare I say, overused. Anyhow, Jaswant is one of those battling the forces of ambivalence. He loves his job, he's ecstatic about the nature of the work he does, he couldn't ask for a better workroom - his overlooks the harbour with its flotilla of ferries and sailboats - but he cannot for two minutes abide the personnel it has been his lot to work for/with, and he's about fed up with the fortnightly peanut-cheque.
He lives in a quiet suburb where the birds do most of the talking; where the air is so clean and invigorating that he can no longer entertain the thought of ever returning to the smog and the petrol and diesel fumes of his former hometown. His lungs, as he says, have never felt healthier.
A lingering cough that worsened with the years has disappeared so thoroughly he sometimes wonders if he didn't dream that up. And the sheer lack of hustling bustling jostling humanity at any given time - on the buses, on trains and in queues which, he postulates, have no right to be called queues in the first place for they hardly snake and nobody tries to edge ahead of you surreptitiously when your back is turned just a few degrees while you discuss the alarming price of onions with someone else.
Contemplating
Jaswant loves Australia. He is now contemplating bringing out his wife and - especially - his two children for whose futures, he thinks, this place holds a magic key. "At least I will get them out of the rat race and into the human race once more," he opines, adding hastily, defensively, "Not that I'm disloyal to my own country but what do you do when your own space is not your own space, then you come here and find acres and acres of openness stretching invitingly. You have to go for it."
Even the reader would have sensed by now that there's a conditionality lurking somewhere, and indeed it is. It is this: Jaswant's ambivalence consists not merely of his overwhelming love for Australia trying to dwell alongside those little pockets of personal/personnel distaste/hate he has to put up with at work. He is facing a slightly more complex issue. He has been raised to be tactful in the things he says and does. The characteristic of a diplomat, he points out, is that he says things with the intention of hurting no one. You walk into a room that is noisy, he says as an example. All in the room are your friends. Half of them can't stand the noise. The other half is the noisemakers.
The diplomat in you has only one stance: It is indeed a bit noisy, but it's a nice kind of noise. But here's the crux of his ambivalence: Co-existing with that thought is the other one that says, 'Don't be a hypocrite. Speak your mind. Everybody's entitled to an opinion. Tell your mates at work exactly what you think of them. You don't have to smile away the barbs every day. Or do I, he asks.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
