Grey Gardens

Well, Patrick over at SBP asked me to do a guest post for him since he'll be off on a long cruise with no internet access. I would say check out his blog next Saturday to read it, but honestly it's late enough and I'm tired enough that I don't really feel like writing a second post in one day. Therefore, I will give you a sneak peek at Patrick's post for sometime next week and let you read it now. Hopefully once he gets back, I'll have him guest post here and you'll get to e-meet him. Yay!

This past year, I wrote an essay on an interesting topic. I wasn't particularly happy with the piece, since it was a last minute one, but I think I touched on an interesting topic. I entitled the essay "Shades of Grey." The world isn't black and white. People think in extremes too much. Good and bad. Right and wrong. For and against. But in order to truly experience the world around us, I believe we have to look at the world not from these extremes, but from a midpoint. The problem is, society as a whole teaches us the opposite. If someone isn't right, they're wrong, and there isn't any way around that. The thing is, I think that's false. I think that the world is more complicated than that.

I think that murderers aren't always bad people. I think that you can't argue with someone properly without being able to look at it from their point of view. Hell, that's part of what allows P.I. and I to get along so well. Just because I'm an atheist doesn't meant that I can't get along with people who have strong convictions in their faith. It's easier to believe that things are simple. It's easier to shut your eyes and mouth and think of people as evil if you have to kill them. We aren't fighting people in wars, they're collateral damage. The truth, however, is much more complicated and much less pretty. Every "bad guy" has a mother. Has some sort of family. We see villains in movies and read about them in books and they are evil. They want power or money. Sometimes we can feel sympathy for them. A well-written villain should be someone we can feel sympathy for. Someone we can even mourn.

Good and evil are just the tip of the extremity iceberg. Even more important is wrong and right. You can be wrong and right. You can be both. You should be both. If we go through our lives thinking only in terms of this versus that, we can't begin to ponder the important questions: who am I, what am I doing, do I have a purpose, if so what. Anyhow. I think that's enough pondering. I hope you've been interested.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.