White lotus in black and white. For more of my flowers (CLICK HERE)
It’s easy to feel inspired by color, it’s easy to feel some sense of emotion brought on by vibrancy.
Most of the time in life, we tend to see things as one way or the other: black and white, good and bad, law and order. We learn early that there aren’t really shades to living. You’re either this or you’re that, there is no in-between…right?
If there truly is no in-between, then how do we get from one place to the next? How do we go from warm weather to cold? How do we get from our house to the grocery store? How do we go from child to adult?
Ideally, it would be nice to just jump from one place in life to the other using some kind of societal lily pads. Even then, there’s still the jump itself. The moment we’re mid-flight where nothing seems to be happening.
No matter how much we try to work around it or escape the idea, there will always be a gray area in life. A place we end up where we aren’t to sure of what to do. For me, the Catholic ideology of purgatory comes to mind. Where, as a young catholic, you’re taught right away about the good and the bad, heaven and hell, but only once you’re in your teens do they tell you, “Well, actually, there’s a third option…you could end up nowhere…”
“What?! What do you mean nowhere? Isn’t nowhere still some place? I could do all the good I can and still end up with only a shrug at the pearly gates and be sent to some void of existence? Is there a way out?..Why?!” All things even as a fourteen year old, I knew not to ask my youth leader.
The thing is though, that’s how most people react when they are faced with a place of non-action. With nothing and no one to react to, how does one act?
Why does being in a place of non-doing scare so many people? Why are unknowns so scary to us as a society? Maybe it’s because we’re born into a world that makes you think you always have to know. But, what happens when we don’t know?
What happen’s in the gray areas of life?
You do.
Gray areas scare us because we’re taught too early on that we have to know everything about the world outside ourselves leading to years, if not a lifetime, of inner neglect. Yeah, there’s plenty for us to see and know in the outside world, but what about the world within?
Do you ever just look up at the stars at night sometimes? Sit, notice one in particular and think, “Wow. It’s such a big universe and yet this one star still manages to shine through…” We choose to see ourselves as the star when really, we’re the universe. We sympathize with the star because we think it doesn’t know what it’s doing; we’ve been convinced through bad teaching that we’re too insignificant to ever know what we’re doing.
Meanwhile, the universe is looking back at us through the star saying, “Hello, fellow cosmic being.”
We haven’t been able to know who we are for a long, long time. This year forced us all into a world wide gray area. The United States especially. People were nicest to one another for a while, until the true gravity of the situation set in and they realized they were struck, stranded in their own home with company they didn’t like that much: themselves. Not long after, the anger and frustration and projected guilt started to seep through.
All because, people don’t know what to do with themselves.
What are we meant to do with ourselves? Something the system has long since neglected to teach or show us: we’re meant to love ourselves.
Not question whether or not we should, or ask if we deserve it. Just love yourself as a human being. Because in this love, the love of the self, is every answer we truly need.
Yes, knowledge is power. But power isn’t why we’re here. We’re not meant to hold power over each other, we’re meant to come together and live life. To just, be human and experience what that means with one another.
Yes, knowledge is power but to acknowledge the inner knowledge you might be lacking is empowering. This is the hidden truth of the gray area. This is the hidden truth of you.
What makes the gray area beautiful? You do.
