“Either Way” is an achingly melancholic song about the complex emotions we feel from watching someone who’s “almost kind.” It captures that moment when you witness a glimpse of hope, of a piece of kindness seen in someone who is generally perceived as unkind.
It’s easy for us to jump to conclusions and think that mean people are mean through and through — like bullies. But the thing is that we are born warm and tender and probably kind — but we learn to be unkind along the way. For example, bullying is bad and unjustifiable, but we often fail to see that bullies are victims, too, of whatever life’s experiences that made them that way. I hope that we can all learn to take the high road, and wish for bullies and meanies alike to realize that our social relationships are reflections of the energies we’re putting out — so even if you put the moral, ethical and karmic issues aside, being unkind ultimately is counter-productive to our being happy and loved. We all are born good — and it’s probably still in there, inside us. So it conjures up all kinds of feelings to see a piece of it in someone who looked like s/he has lost it all.