Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Jalal al-Din Rumi.

There is a field. It is not necessarily a literal one, though qualitative researchers might call it that. It is a field of possibility and encounter, reflection and meaning. This is a field beyond binaries and beyond the pressure to place things into categories and conclude, beyond the demand for a dogmatic stance of either for or against or right and wrong. This field is where complexity breathes. It is where listening happens and where human experience is not filtered or coded away.

The 13th-century Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi invites us towards this space in his most quoted line: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” It is both poetic and practical. It is a vision of ‘knowing’ that embraces nuance, humility and transformation. This is the spirit of qualitative inquiry.

The Flattening

A few weeks ago, while shopping (yes, I still do my own shopping, despite podcasting fame), I was approached by someone conducting a poll on current UK affairs. I was always curious about how these things work, especially how they make this data generalisable to national approval ratings and so on. So, I agreed to take part. What followed, though, was a sequence of yes/no, for/against questions. For or against the government. For or against migration. For or against Israel or Gaza and other impossibly complex conflicts. I felt frustrated. Each question was to yield a binary. There was no space for context, explanation or doubt.

It reminded me of the common theme through Ben Goldacre’s book I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That. Because it is. Most things are. Yet, these kinds of polls that shape headlines and influence policy offer no room for hesitation, ambivalence or the deeply textured nature of how people really think. They flatten thought into data points, stripping away the very human richness they claim to measure.

What about the space between the binaries? What about the mixed feelings, the conditional sympathies and the inevitable uncertainties? Could I be critical of a Prime Minister while also being sympathetic to what they are trying to do? Can I support migration in principle and still worry about how it is managed in practice? Can we not admit sometimes that we just don’t know enough?

The absence of nuance is dangerous, as well as frustrating. It is a symptom of how public discourse privileges speed over substance, outrage over understanding and answers before finding out just a little bit more about an uncertain situation, such as how a novel coronavirus might be spreading in a given community.

Dwelling in Rumi’s Field

This is where qualitative research offers something radically different. It deliberately does not categorise people, behaviours or topics into tidy boxes. Neither does it assume that everyone has an opinion or that opinions can be easily extracted. Instead, it invites encounter and complexity. Difficult topics are teased out, discussed and unpacked. In the best sense, it dwells in people’s stories, metaphors and even contradictions. It sits perfectly well across all of these.

In this way, you could say that Rumi’s ‘field’ is much more than a metaphor. It is foreshadowing an entire mindset and a methodology that was to emerge centuries ahead of Rumi’s time on Earth. And it is a happy coincidence that qualitative researchers also refer to “the field” as a space of data gathering. It is more than that: the qualitative field is a space for ethical attention and deep listening. This is a place where the researcher is not outside the process but part of it, learning alongside the participant. This is a world away from the clipboard-and-pen (well, in my case just an ipad and a stylus) of my recent polling experience.

Subjectivity as Data

Qualitative inquiry begins with the radical assumption that subjectivity is not a flaw. It is not a variable to be controlled or eliminated. In fact, it is a source of knowledge. It is the data.

Beyond the field, Rumi’s poetry exemplifies this. His personal, emotive voice continues to resonate because it captures truth through recognition, rather than evidence of argument. When he writes now classic lines, such as “Try not to resist the changes that come your way” or “Your pain will become your cure”, Rumi is speaking from the heart of lived experience. This chimes with the values of qualitative research in how these values make meaning through emotion, memory, culture and context. It is what people really think and not what we think they might be as abstractions.

Metaphor as Method

In both Rumi’s works and qualitative research, metaphor is a method and not mere flourishes or ornaments. It carries the emotional weight of what cannot be said plainly or simply. Illness is a storm. Trauma is a shadow. Treating cancer is a battle. These metaphors are how people think. They are the tools of making meaning.

In health research in particular, these metaphors become bridges between experience and understanding. They do not give way to easy interpretation. They cannot be reduced to statistics. This is why they are often ignored in quantitative analysis.

Qualitative Research as an Ethical Stance

Qualitative inquiry is an ethical stance, as well as a method. It rejects simplification and sometimes coherence. It is messy: it allows people to be contradictory, unclear and incomplete. Not knowing is more often than not the most legitimate place to begin.

And in a time when public discourse is dominated by polarisation, the qualitative approach is vital. We live in a world where even wars are treated like spectacles: Israel versus Gaza, Russia versus Ukraine. The spectators – us – are expected to pick a side. Positions are announced loudly. All the world is a stage. What compels us to form strong opinions about conflicts we barely understand? Why do some human tragedies dominate our discourse while others, like Myanmar, Mali, Sudan or Ethiopia, barely register?

Perhaps instead of adopting instant stances, especially on matters that may not directly concern us or that we do not know enough about, we might do well to practice something else: enter the field of Rumi and watch, listen and learn. Not every global event requires a performative reaction. All the world is not a stage, actually. Sometimes the most honest and human response is to pause and say: “I need to understand more”.

Qualitative inquiry models this posture. It is a discipline of humility. It is a reminder that the world does not need our verdicts as much as it needs our witness.

Returning to the Field

While there are indeed forms of research that yield clear answers and tidy numbers, there are also forms that invite us to dwell in the ambiguity and to make space for the unsaid. These forms allow us to explore metaphor rather than following the metric.

There is a field, out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, beyond survey boxes and soundbites, where people speak not just in answers, but in stories. This is a field where complexity is a condition to be respected and not a problem to be solved. That is where qualitative inquiry lives, instead of the neat categories of quantitative research or the unnuanced, entrenched dogma of contemporary online discourse. Rumi’s field is where I want to be, forever.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Leeds, United Kingdom, June 2025