Beautiful Grey

We put ourselves in a mold and confine ourselves to categories.  We say the world is black and white and deny all the grey that those colors make when they blend.  We cannot help I suppose, that our minds are hardwired to think this way, but being conscious of that fact is at least a step in the right direction.  I resolved myself to these kinds of shortcomings.  It is freeing in a way.  There is a difference between knowing you are flawed and accepting it.  We all know we have flaws, but then we put up a constant fight to subdue them, deny them, or justify them.  Accepting our flaws can bring us peace.  I know a man that accomplishes this.  You can almost see his clarity on his face.  There is no stress because there is no tension.  There is no tension because there is no attempt to mask or deny or hide that which he cannot.  He sees himself in reality, in a realistic way.  Once our lives and very beings are an open book, there is no need for tension.  Some people have it worse in this world than I do.  Sometimes I'm not as cognizant of that fact as I should be.  Sometimes I am selfish.  Sometimes I am cold.  Sometimes I am very simply just an asshole.  These things I always somehow knew, but I didn't always  necessarily accept them.  Once I realized that every human being on this planet (myself included) was a hypocrite at times and learned that I was guilty of the sin of comparison AND accepted these facts, I found a sense of peace.  The great trick is knowing that even though I found this peace, I would not always be peaceful.  I would break my own rules, I would defy my own categories and use different molds.  I would generalize, categorize, and made wrong judgment calls.  But that does not define me.  Sometimes I am kind.  Sometimes I am compassionate.  Sometimes I am honorable and wise.  The world is a wonderful and terrible place at the same time.  You can be the bad guy in one person's world one day and be a good guy in someone else's in the same day.  That is possible and does happen.  We try desperately for this not to be the case.  We must have everything in a nice category.  We actually fight against this reality in a sense.  We feel the need to label because we need that organization in our minds so our brains don't fry.  It is easier to function when we have a quick reference that we can go to.  That doesn't mean things truly are black and white and if they appear that way, it is almost always simply that way on the surface.  We are dynamic.  We are malleable.  We are many things at the same time.  We just have to remember that it's ok to accept that fact and see the world for the beautiful shades of grey that it really is.

Keep on Keepin' on.