the human gray areas

People are tricky. It can be very hard to see and accept their entirety, with complexities and contradictions and multiplicity. Every one of us is a wild, yearning, hurting, loving, longing, imaginative human being with needs and desires and histories.

I am a recovering black-and-white thinker, and this is especially important when it comes to viewing people. People exist in the gray areas. None of us is all good or all bad. At many times in my life, I have found it exceedingly challenging to accept good parts of people I’ve categorized as “bad” for whatever reason and to come to terms with bad parts of people I’ve admired and thought of as “good.” It’s simpler this way, but so much less true and less gracious and healthy.

The messier but better way is the path of compassion, wide open eyes, honesty, forgiveness, clarity, second chances, and a bigger perspective. It’s hard to take in the full story when you’re hell-bent on not liking someone, and it’s hard to keep room for human error and poor judgment calls or mistakes when you idolize.

In either extreme, we’ll miss things — truths and realities and humanity. If we’ve determined someone is only a lazy, terrible person, we might totally miss it or refuse to accept when they’re amazingly generous or kind. Gleaming bright spots shine through. Our own wisdom is greatly hampered by being unwilling to embrace the full range of perspective and human experience.

How ironic — what a paradox or hypocrisy — that I have found it inexcusable and unallowable, when dealing with difficult people, that they should even be the way they are, though I also am a difficult person sometimes.

I am trying to remind myself to notice and accept and be open. Humility and efforts towards understanding. Imagine their perspective and how their story has landed them where they are now. Zoom out. Even when it’s difficult or terrible or causing pain, there is always more to the story.