Just Not Black And White

     If life were only painted with a thick sable brush using midnight black and winter white. Clearly showing us right from wrong with a broad stroke. But it isn’t. There are no clear lines just a blurry smudge of grey as we struggle to find our moral boundaries. I have come to accept this as I have tried to find my way- looking for the “real answers” to life’s questions.

     So many social issues confront us daily. It is up to each of us to decide how we will respond. I believe that my best choices are those made with compassion and thought. Sometimes it seems so clear and easy as to what is right- especially when we believe we will never be in the position to need to consider the alternative. But empathy brings the full picture into better view and makes it less fuzzy for me. I find that if I put myself in the place of another, I can begin to see how that alternative may be a necessary surrogate option.

     Yet there are many individuals out there who carry such anger and fear for the rest of us. The self-righteousness is blinding and does not let one view the world as perfectly imperfect place that it is. Instead the world is seen as rigid, casting people into lots of right and wrong, good and bad, and alas sinners and saints. This attitude never gives one the opportunity to explore another view and steals the ability to compromise- right out from under them.

     I don’t know how some people can be so rigid in their thinking. So bound by their thoughts that they can not see beyond- trapped in a sense, by their own choosing. For every ideal, value and thought that fills my head, I try to also see that it need be fluid, mercurial in a sense. For what seems to fit today in the puzzle of life, just can’t be jammed into the same spot tomorrow.