When you are brought up in a middle-class family, everything around you is oscillating between just good and bad, like and dislike, beautiful and ugly, a definitive black and white. You are conditioned and trained to have only two choices and as you grow up it is forced, reinforced until that becomes your DNA and signature statement!
As you mature and venture out, start feeling the world around, you are surprised to see those greys; the panorama of hues and shades between black and white is like a wild explosion between your eyes. With my myopic eyes, had to squint a little harder, but definitely all those hues flowed or I should say gushed in. It was not just the hues that surprised me, it was also the texture of the greys that took my breath away- rough, smooth, shiny, silky, velvety, granular, dotted, coarse, jagged.
The conditioning was so strong that it took me years to recognize and accept a grey shade. The moment a grey mist emerged in my horizon, I used to run past my scales of right and wrong – which was a limiting and exhausting habit. It took years of practice to let people, incidents and situations drift without me viewing through my black and white blinders. Has it helped? Does it serve any purpose? I’m not sure, but it definitely makes life more interesting thus allowing me to accept people/situations and most importantly, makes me capable of being accepted.
Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.
― Sri Aurobindo
