The nuanced truth

Owner

Brian Rumao

January 26, 2026

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde

It might be my logically-minded brain, or my engineering-major and math-minor honors education, or the way I was raised as the son of an accountant — but for pretty much my whole life, I have been under the mindset that there is always a right way of doing things. A single, correct answer to be discovered. My eyes looked for black and white, and refused to see the gray.

This began to change when a beloved colleague invited me to a walk with her in 2014. She asked me whether I knew about the meaning of her favorite word, “nuance”. I really didn’t (which I suppose explained a lot). She then enlightened me, and encouraged me to seek the subtleties in meetings, conversations, and emails. Especially emails — where I’d often come across as robotic and cold — prompting reactions I didn’t understand until much later.

To this day, I still sometimes struggle with nuance. I seek out “the right answer”, as if life were a math problem to solve, rather than a wave to ride. There’s no single right way to ride a wave. I’m learning there are more skillful ways, and less skillful ways, for sure. I remind myself there’s a world of possibility to be discovered by doing things my way, or our way, or a new way. Any way but the one and only way — because that doesn’t exist. And that’s the nuanced truth.