Enter the Gray
When we’re young, we’re told stories of knights fighting dragons. Of good conquering evil. It always wins. The lines are clearly cut, good vs bad. There’s no middle ground, after all, how could there be? The Big Bad has no soul and only wants to destroy all that is in its path. All the while, the Good Hero is there to take it on in a shimmering white light and a sword that gleams in the moonlight.
But then we grow up and realize, the world isn’t good or bad. The Big Bad can actually be a pretty decent guy that has an excellent taste in friends. And if we really look at the Good Hero’s sword we can see it stained red in all those that he’s killed, murdering just as many as the Big Bad.
Life is pretty gray, no matter how much we want to believe it is good or bad. Most of us, and most of what happens in life, exist in these in-between spaces that aren’t entirely bad nor entirely good. This is where the human heart, empathy, and compassion live.
When we can look at something, someone, or some event that seems God awful and find the brokenness, the human-ness, then we start to see how we too could be led to make those same choices. And then, we can start to see that no one is entirely good or bad.
But, I suppose, we should take a step back. What makes someone good or bad? Is it a definition by culture, religion or the lack thereof, or morality set upon us by the government? What makes someone good? Philosophers as far back as Plato and Aristotle have tried to figure out what it is that causes a person to be morally conscious. Questions like, are we born morally good or not?
These are questions that I don’t have the answer to. I can’t give you quick summaries of Kant, Hume, Aristotle, Plato, Lewis, and Hobbes. That’s not what I want to do. I would like to pose the question and ask for a breath before assumptions are made.
We live in a time where political tensions are high surrounding race, sexual abuse and assault, LGBT rights, immigration, and the list goes on. Why not, instead of assuming we’re right all the time? Instead of immediately thinking that person is wrong and bad because of what they believe or how they look, we take a breath.
Just pause.
I’m not saying to throw out your beliefs or change them, what you believe is what makes you you, just take a breath. And listen to someone who has a different story than you do.
Listen to someone who was assaulted or is an immigrant or lives in poverty or suffers under discrimination. Just listen. You don’t have to change what you believe. You don’t have to assume they’re right. You just have to listen.
The best conversations and friendships are started because people take the time to listen. We all live in the gray and complex issues live with complex people. The justice system in the US is complex because it’s run by broken humans who aren’t perfect. None of us are. The issues start happening when we believe we are perfect and we believe that everyone else should be like us. That’s a type of control that is unrealistic for our lives. It’s an unhealthy control.
The gray gets messy and difficult when you start living in it. When you realize emotions exist there. And emotions are fucking insane to navigate sometimes. It gets difficult when you realize there are some people who use the gray to manipulate others who don’t realize how gray the world is. They see where the lines actually are and tread carefully around them. They push and pull people, manipulating, gaslighting, and abusing people because that’s the way they know how to survive.
But even that gets messy when you take a further step back and start to figure out how they got there and got to be the people that they are. This does not negate accountability. It does not negate breaking unhealthy cycles or bringing awareness to things that are harmful to people. This is only, to take a step back and realize that it’s not about you. It never was.
Living in the US, and speaking for myself as a person who lives with anxiety and depression, that is difficult. We, as Americans, are taught that it is all about us. That we are the center of the world. Look at our media, our maps, our politics, our greatest-country-ever rhetoric. We are taught to be prideful and to always be right. Now, as a broken human and as someone who cares for others, take a step back. Look around you and realize that that is pride. Tell your pride to shut up and listen to someone who doesn’t look like you or think like you or talk like you.
You might start seeing the gray for how murky it really is. And how scarily hard it is to navigate everything that exists in it.