Shades of Grey

The hardest part is growing up, knowing things will never be the same again, no matter how much you retain that attitude, or how much you manage to refrain from change.

It’s taxing. Memories imbibe themselves in your system, some of them deeply embedded, most others lost to repression. Control evades you when pillars crumble before your very eyes. Strength seems a myth, fear blankets and blinds everything that could help you get past the anguish.

Strength. . . is lost to the environment around you. Dissipates into the air, slowly, surely, ensuring the painstaking process harms you. A cruel jape played by Fate several times.

Hushed voices, whispered words, speculation, surrounded by disjointed hands of faces filled with a concoction of expressions- fear, hatred, ridicule, anger, panic, sadism. Yet, not a soul moves to try and set the wrong right.

Life is not black or white, it’s several shades of grey.

I say that for two reasons I have pondered over for several years, but never quite voiced out.

1.      Our cognitive short cuts (more commonly associated with the lay man term of stereotypes) cause us to think of black as dark and brooding (a sign of evil) and white as pure, peaceful, ideal (angels, anyone?)

2.      Grey, no matter how bright or dark, is gloomy right through.

There’s something about the color that appeals to my senses, and honestly, not in a morbid fashion. It is the ONLY color, right through its gradience that is gloomy. It is never happy, but never quite sad, put simply.

Human beings are neither fully content, nor quite completely unhappy. They are, somehow, always caught inbetween.

For instance, in the day of any average human being, they experience a tumult of emotions, micro-expressions, without so much as realizing it. To a third person, they appear a certain way. They themselves probably don’t even realize it most times.

Think of THE happiest person in YOUR life. Everyone knows such a person- someone who hasn’t deal with much in life, lives the perfect happy life, is protected, sheltered, so on so forth. The instant they have to deal with something a little outside their comfort zones, they become insecure, hyperventilate. Nervous. Slowly, they fall into this pattern wherein it causes some amount of sadness in them.

Yeah. Not quite the “I’m going to kill myself because this isn’t going to work out and it’s the best thing for me” sad, but sad enough for them.

I remember how, during Psych class, a friend and I would mark everyone as excessively neurotic, or majorly depressed (no brownie points for guessing which one I was). Then, on exposure to the bipolar disorder in all its glory, something clicked in our dormant minds. We realized that everything is put with respect to everything else- but our cognitive shortcuts don’t allow us that element of doubt. Our cognitive shortcuts tell us, owing to (yes, wait for it. . .  ) laziness, cause us to compare everyone to the ‘ideal’ happiness or the horrific depression.

That’s just it though, just like how norms are subject to change with respect to the culture, or country, the people or more broadly, the environment- so too are humans and their emotions!

Yes, we really ARE different from one another. What makes me happy, might not apply for you. What makes you sad, might not apply for me. Most likely it won’t.

If, for instance, you’re aggrieved by death, in all likelihood, someone else is least concerned (and I’m not referring to cold-blooded murderers, assassins, or any of those exceptions). It’s really just as simple as that- what works for you, won’t work for me. And that isn’t a newfound idea , really. I’m sure you’ve thought of it more than once in your entire life. But honestly, we’re a bunch of ignorant farts who need to realize it applies universally for more than just the reason that I like dark chocolate, while you hate it.

Life really IS that grey.

Coming back to the point- growing up.

In my head, we all start off with the lightest shade of grey. By the time we’re teens, we’ve managed to enter the darker shades of grey.

By our 30s, it gets darker. . .

Surely by now you get the flow.

Then, somehow, people come along and add that 'color' to your life. . The reds and purples, blues and greens. . The eloquent and the mysterious . . The pale and the dark. That zest, pizzaz. . . You name it.

Somehow. .  .

Everything in life comes down to colors. Everything. Just like every government ultimately boils down to economics, and every child's upbringing boils down to environment.



We recognize colors 'cause they have universal meanings. . They transcend borders, and go beyond language. Perhaps, if we didn't have language, every color, every shade would mean something. Maybe that would have been our language- a world full of colours. Rainbows. Leprachauns. Pearly whites and pools of black. . . Bubbling blue waterfalls, and black nights filled with twinkling spots of silver. Not that it isn't already. . but most of us don't communicate that way. . . Some of us, still do. . albeit not entirely.

But no. That's not how it is.

Life's grey. It just has its moments. . Like we have ours.