For years, a good many years, now, I have tried to consistently adhere to the “pancake theory.”

The “pancake theory?” you ask. Yes. A very simple, basic, common sense approach to a whole lot of things, issues, viewpoints, opinions.

Simply put, it’s knowing that no pancake is so thin that it doesn’t have two sides, and applying that belief to situations where there are differences of opinion. In truth, there are often even more than two sides to, well, as I said, a whole lot of things.

Among such “things” would be, of course, the often-contentious world of, you guessed it, politics. Lord help us.

There are those who believe, who know, that they are absolutely right (no pun intended) in their views, and anything even remotely different is wrong.

Well. There is no such thing as being right on everything all the time, when we take into account the subjectivity of how we each go about forming opinions.

Be one Republican, Democrat, Independent, unaffiliated, neither you nor I are right about everything in the political world all the time. I could extend this reasoning into religion, but I know better. Such thinking is fraught with danger.

Even though I fall on one side of the political divide, it would be presumptuous of me, arrogant and hard-headedly so, to dismiss at least some of the concerns of those on the other side. The “pancake theory” demands such open-mindedness. I expect this of myself even though I know there is scant chance of reciprocity. While I have no inclination to attempt to change the views of others, I demand of myself at least an attempt at seeing things from their perspective.

And so forth and so on, probably boringly so. As in, who really gives a rat’s rump about what I think, or say, or write or do?

Anyway, just for the heck of it, why don’t you consider (some of you may already do so) giving the “pancake theory” a try from time to time.

Who knows what might happen?

APROPOS — “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

— Camus