Growing up with OCD, I liked everything to be clear-cut. Things were either good or bad. Right or wrong. While I wasn’t color blind, I did have a hard time accepting or even recognizing shades of gray in my life. Now, at 32, my life is one big ball of gray. And what’s most surprising is that I’m perfectly okay with that. In fact, I find freedom and self-compassion in no longer having to clearly label everything. By accepting the world as murky, I don’t have to fit all of my own actions into clearly labeled categories. This makes it a whole lot harder to demonize my sense of self. I am not all good or all bad. Like the rest of us, I lie somewhere in the middle.
Allison, your lovely post reminds me of song lyrics from the late, great, Mr. Rogers (as in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.) “The very same people who are good sometimes, Are the very same people who are bad sometimes” I periodically recall these lines when a more base part of myself seems on the verge of manifesting - forgiveness for being human. In fact, it just occurred to me that these song lyrics are the TV-land version of lovingkindness meditation!
Loved this post. I have a sometimes overwhelming fear of gray areas. Moral ambiguity is my nightmare, so much so that I wake up with guilt that I can’t even assign a reason to. I’m turning 26 in less than a month, and I’ve decided to forgive myself for everything that I’ve done that was “gray” in my past (my brain hadn’t even finished developing!) I hope I can take some of your ideas about letting go of moral rigidity into my next 26 years!
It's so hard to forgive and more on, but it's also so important! I've gotten much more comfortable with gray as I've gotten older and I hope you have a similar trajectory! It's definitely possible if you give yourself the freedom! Plus as you grow up you just have more and more gray experiences, which helps too! xoxo A
I know this post is from quite awhile ago, but I revisited it today during a time when I really needed a reminder that messiness, grey-areas, mistakes, and complex emotions are part of life. It's a hard thing to wrap my head around, but this post was very helpful, thank you <3
Allison, your lovely post reminds me of song lyrics from the late, great, Mr. Rogers (as in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.) “The very same people who are good sometimes, Are the very same people who are bad sometimes” I periodically recall these lines when a more base part of myself seems on the verge of manifesting - forgiveness for being human. In fact, it just occurred to me that these song lyrics are the TV-land version of lovingkindness meditation!
Wow I love that so much!! Thank you for sharing!! xoxo A
Loved this post. I have a sometimes overwhelming fear of gray areas. Moral ambiguity is my nightmare, so much so that I wake up with guilt that I can’t even assign a reason to. I’m turning 26 in less than a month, and I’ve decided to forgive myself for everything that I’ve done that was “gray” in my past (my brain hadn’t even finished developing!) I hope I can take some of your ideas about letting go of moral rigidity into my next 26 years!
It's so hard to forgive and more on, but it's also so important! I've gotten much more comfortable with gray as I've gotten older and I hope you have a similar trajectory! It's definitely possible if you give yourself the freedom! Plus as you grow up you just have more and more gray experiences, which helps too! xoxo A
I know this post is from quite awhile ago, but I revisited it today during a time when I really needed a reminder that messiness, grey-areas, mistakes, and complex emotions are part of life. It's a hard thing to wrap my head around, but this post was very helpful, thank you <3
I'm so glad it resonated! Sending love! xoxo A