Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Life. It can be a joy, a disappointment, a pleasure, a pain, even at times, an anti-climax…. What it is not is black and white. It contains many shades of grey. Way more than 50. Yet for some people they do see it as black and white. You’re right or you’re wrong. They’re a good person or a bad person. You are good at your job or your not. They’re either a good parent or not. For a long time, I was one of those people. Someone that saw things in strictly black or white. But frankly that’s a very limiting and narrow minded way to approach life.
I have been lucky to have a few very dear people in my life who have preserved with me and pushed me to see and embrace the shades of grey. They have encouraged me to venture into the grey abyss and I am all the more a better person for it. But many people who have a tendency to see life as an either / or situation are afraid, reluctant, and even ignorant that the grey exists or the benefit that there is in embracing it. This can often be to their detriment and also to the detriment to those around them or those who are affected by their views.
See, when you do start to embrace the shades of grey, you open up a whole new way of thinking and a whole new way of experiencing life. You expose yourself to a new way of viewing the world and the people in it. You grow and you learn. Whether you agree with other perspectives or ways of doing things doesn’t matter. Whether you made the right call or not doesn’t matter. What matters is putting yourself out there and learning that things are not black or white. In other words pushing your comfort zone and your pre-conceived ways of viewing the world. This, to many “black and white” people, is like asking Tony Abbott to walk a mile in the shoes of those he considers beneath him. It’s simply not something that occurs to them to do or something that they would be prepared to do.
If, however, people were prepared to see life a little less black and white, a little less me versus them, then this country, indeed this world, would be a far better place. A place where we treat fellow human beings with respect, decency and dignity. A place where we see that we are not all that dissimilar. A place where we realise that although I may be a darker shade of grey and you a lighter shade of grey, the reality is we are all some shade of grey.