Grey Ain't Shady

Do we really have to fit in the either/or space. Can we not exist in a spectrum that cannot be tamed by titles? Can the words versatile/ diverse/ multifaceted be used as titles to describing the nature of an entity without alluding to some sort of absence of steadiness?

Many, including myself, have mistaken black and white to be colors when in actual fact they are defined as shades. When we see the shade black, we’re noting an absence of light and when we view an object as white, it is a reflection of the sum of all possible colors. Now that’s a fact and a half considering how we tend to make the same mistake in identifying characters or functions of people and systems around us.

In WIP’s blog posts under the “Ebbs and Flow” category, I’ve explored facets of what it may look like to have the capital you need to make that desire a reality and the capital is heavily aligned with the nature of the dream, it may be one to do with your emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, financial or relational health, whatever the dream may be, truth is, what you have at that point are“ pieces of the puzzle.” I went deeper into it and spoke on the wounds or scars that may develop in the process of familiarizing oneself with the pieces as well as the need to embrace the season’s grace when the process is bearing sweet fruit. We went on to realize that, “Having a back-up plan is not an absence of faith but a presence of trust that if one way of watering the seed doesn’t work, we’ll use another because the plant still has to sprout.”

Now we’ve reached a stage where the plant has sprouted but it’s proving to possess more than we had imagined, and if it were not for our “manifold narrow-mindedness” we’d be ecstatic. “Manifold narrow-mindedness” is quite the contradictory term as manifold alludes to diversity while narrow-mindedness alludes to its absence, but that’s what we suffer from at times. We have a vision for what we’re supposed to sum up to be based on the “pieces’’ and that’s no crime as vision is essential. The issue comes in when we forget that the same piece fits differently in another puzzle and restricting it won’t change that fact. It may look odd, but that’s because your view of its function was limited to one use.

Bringing it closer to home, Pretty Conscience (myself) always had quite an authoritative demeanor. Through leadership positions that had been bestowed on her from quite the root stage, she had developed strength and firmness in speech and conduct, one that was easily felt in an interaction with her. This is not to say that she was unaccommodating or inflexible but she did feel like she could not tap into her humorous side. Wit had been solely defined by formality and anything outside of that would strike as fickle and she sure did not want to be labelled the “F” word, yes, “fake.”

It turns out she was being more unfaithful to herself than she was to upholding a concept. Embracing her spontaneity and quirkiness felt undisciplined because her glory had been translated to complexity. She had limited herself to shades, when in reality she could be various disciplined colors without having to place a mental or psychological pin on it. Yes, she could be strictly approachable, funnily serious, consciously spontaneous and modestly chic.

There is a difference between being two faced and multifaceted. The diversity does not make you two different worlds, people just identify the various aspects from certain parts of other globes and understanding the vast aspects of a gem requires travelling through the many routes and that’s real work. Harder than settling for predetermined opinions.

This is not a protest against titles but a word of affirmation to that soul that relates to being:

Gently tough

Shyly fearless

Subtly impulsive

Crazily normal

Point is, OWN it.