A Gray Colored World

After a cer­tain point in our lives, we real­ize that we are not kids any­more: we get hurt and we feel pain but nobody comes to com­fort us and blow away at the wound. We cry and the world does not stop—it just con­tin­ues with­out break­ing stride.

We can fight this loss and remain indig­nant— remain a brat and act as if the world owes us some­thing. Or we can embrace the bare facts of life: that pain is part of life, just as joy is part of it; that the world can be unfair, but there is good in the world; that friends can hurt you but it doesn’t mean you’re ene­mies for life; that we are respon­si­ble for what we do no mat­ter how we feel; that love can remain long after the feel­ing is gone; that it is ok to make mis­takes. Mis­takes are made with­out our mean­ing to— who­ever wanted to be a mistake-maker— but the fact remains, mis­takes are made. We try to min­i­mize them, but they are made. No mis­take is so great that we could not live it down. And no real suc­cess in the world hap­pened with­out some kind of fail­ure before that.

To remain in that mode of the vic­tim: “He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,” is to lose sight of the real­i­ties of life. To be in vic­tim mode is to see life as a litany of shoulds and musts not just for you but for other peo­ple as well. The world becomes a world of black and white and good vs. evil.

Eas­ier said than done. But there is no other way to go about it. We know this to be true in our heads. We just get trapped and get bit­ten by tem­po­rary amne­sia when we get victimized.

Later on, with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, and with the eyes of faith per­haps, you real­ize that the “bad” things that hap­pened to you may have lim­ited you, but they also made you who you are. And the bad expe­ri­ence itself may have put focus in your life. So what we thought as black was not really black. Black had a shade of gray.

Ger­ald Man­ley Hop­kins said that the world is dap­pled. Skies are couple-coloured as a brindled cow. Trouts that swim are rose-moled. men and women have good sides and bad sides to themselves.

Of course, we want the world to be white. But it is sim­ply not. And to stay in a white world is not just to be naïve, it is to have this sports-team men­tal­ity where the world is divided into us and them; where us is bet­ter than them. Where what I hold as true is THE TRUTH. It is this sports-team men­tal­ity that has hin­dered real dia­logue among reli­gions and among peo­ples. It is this sports-team men­tal­ity that has led to wars and killings in the name of reli­gion and in the name of “what I believe in.”
Maybe it is not about good vs. evil and good con­quer­ing evil. Maybe, just maybe, it is about good tak­ing evil and trans­form­ing it to good. And this is our expe­ri­ence. “Bad” things that hap­pened to us have made us stronger. Our weak­nesses have become strengths. Great ene­mies have become our clos­est friends (isn’t it funny how you become even closer to a per­son after a fight?). We still find strength to con­tinue long after we say we have given up. “Bad” expe­ri­ences have made us bet­ter per­sons. That is why weak­ness is strength. That is why death brings life.

And maybe in the end, that is why the Cross is salvation!