The Purple Middle
I’m seeing more and more people getting sucked into red side, blue side, far left, far right. The world feels like a pendulum swinging hard one way, then snapping back the other. Murders hit the news and you start to wonder if strong voices are being silenced on purpose. Conspiracies or not, it’s ugly.
Feels like we’ve inhaled all the “make America great again” we can. Time to exhale.
I really believe most people want to be in the middle. Not the beige middle where nothing happens. The purple middle—where the pull from both sides creates tension. Guidelines, not rules. That’s where life has teeth.
On stage, that tension shows up every night. Like at Golden Hoosier when I blanked after my opener. Old me might have called it failure. Now I know it’s food. In boxing, when you take a punch, it’s not punishment—it’s information. Same thing with comedy. The blank was just a rep. The Milk Carton joke I don’t like but the crowd loves? More data. Their laugh doesn’t make it my truth. My taste doesn’t make it theirs. I need both. That tension keeps me sharp.
And it’s not just comedy or boxing. We’re living in the early chapters of late-stage capitalism. Technology’s moving faster than we can process. AI outpacing our economy. Wars shifting into shapes we don’t even understand yet. No other planet to escape to, and the power to blow this one up a dozen different ways. That’s the backdrop. The middle is the only place we can stand without tipping.
But here’s the catch: the middle doesn’t mean surrender. It’s not about shrinking yourself into a persona just to keep peace. I catch myself doing that sometimes—around women I find wildly attractive but whose availability isn’t clear. If I know they’re available, I’m fine. If I know they’re not, I’m fine. But when it’s vague, when there’s hesitation about where they stand, I shrink myself to avoid moving into dangerous waters. I do it to keep drama away, but I wish I didn’t. That’s not sovereignty.
Sovereignty is standing where you are, honest and steady, without letting uncertainty erase you.
So I keep circling back to this: the purple middle is where the tension lives. Where you don’t cruise, you grind. Where talent fades and discipline takes over. Where you stop calling blanks or punches failures and start calling them reps.
The middle isn’t beige. It’s purple. Two colors pulling at once so you don’t fall asleep.
What do you think—are we just reacting to our environment, or is there something deeper pulling us toward the middle?
