Writing Assignment

For my Personal Essay class, the instructor has assigned this week that we should write a compare and contrast story or conflict/resolution. At the same time, the instructor in the Poetry class has assigned this task: Take a controversial issue, write a paragraph in defense of your position. Set it aside. Write a second paragraph in defense of the opposite position. Using both as fodder, hammer it into a poem. Methinks I can kill two birds with one stone. 

I hate controversy. Conflict eats my gut out. I'm not afraid of either but feel inadequate to defend my position. So thinking it through, at least on one issue, should be a good thing. It is, in the most practical sense, the personification of walking a mile in another person's shoes. But the shoes I wear are the ones I've chosen after trying on many pair, outgrowing some, wearing through the soles of others, and settling nicely into comfortable, well broken shoes. Ultimately, I would hope I am seasoned enough that I wouldn't call someone else's shoes ugly just because they didn't fit me.  However, I can look logically at certain stilettos and offer sound reasons why they are a poor footwear choice. And why wearing steel toed work boots under a prom dress would be equally inappropriate.

If it were that simple. Controversy and conflict comes from issues of importance. Imperatives. Quality of life issues. Life or death even. Someone standing in the way of my goals, genuine needs or selfish demands.

My subject for compare and contrast (for and against): Whether any person, government or institution has the right to determine when life should begin or end. (examples: fertility treatments, invitro, cloning, giving birth to twins at age 60, abortion, mercy killing, euthanasia, suicide, assisted suicide, homicide).

Yeah. I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns. Your prayers (and sympathy) are requested.