Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Fifty Shades of Gray....if not more!

The color gray, they say is the "new" black for all things fashion and chic.  Interesting, since there really is only real shade of black and grey comes in many shades and hues...which gray is this "new" replacement? Why, there are even a couple of different ways to spell this "new" fashion color, gray or grey...both are correct, one is the British version, but black is and has always been black.

Gray or grey is also a place, it's that area between black and white in our world, ways of thinking, working, speaking, and doing things.  This grey through the years has expanded to quite a large parameter, to the point that it's hard to see where it ends and the black/white area begins.  Black and white have always resembled the good and the bad, the right and the wrong and the gray area has always been that limbo place that has no definitive definition...no real right or wrong/good or bad.

As a parent, I guess I see more gray areas for my children as they step through the hoops of life.  Moral and just plain good judgment seems to have been replaced with an attitude of "I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else...but if it does, that's not my problem."  Personal rights have replaced personal responsibility.  Case in point:  My son and his wife surprised us a year or so ago while we were on vacation by building a really pretty flower garden around our mailbox, bricks, perennials, the works. We have been very successful in keeping it up through the years, but one day, I was out weeding another garden and a neighbor walked by with his huge dog, they promptly stopped at our mailbox for the dog to inspect and do his business.  I stood up and said, "Please don't, please don't!!  We've worked hard to keep that little garden nice!!"  The guy didn't move his dog, instead said, "It's an animal, lady, what's the big deal."  "The big deal is that this dog is YOUR dog and your responsibility to train him not to go on neighbor's property!"  The dog relieved itself on my mailbox garden and the guy never looked at me just walked away.  I guess calling out to his back that he was a pig, and a terrible neighbor and that he needed to live in the country didn't seem very  turning the cheek-like conduct...grr!!

The black area:  So this guy has a pet that needs to relieve itself and it doesn't really matter where so long as the dog is taken care of, don't mind me and my property in the process, “it’s just an animal, for heaven's sake!"

The White area:  Property owner asks that the pet owner not allow the pet to do business on their property.  The pet owner respects the wishes and takes the dog to their own property for business doing.
The Gray area:  The pet owner comes back another day with pet and allows it to relief itself when property owner is not around......no harm done, right?

Where is the conscience?  Where is the compassion for neighbor?  Where is the respect for others wishes?
These are the signs of the times where programming holds nothing back; music continues to saturate immorality to the point that the gray area has the upper hand.  Like the saying goes, if little Johnny is told he's bad, stupid, ugly, enough times, he begins to believe it.   As is the case for what we are served every day from TV, radio, movies, and what we read in the newspaper, magazines, books, etc.
During the past decade or so, things like co-habitation has become common place, children born out of wedlock...normal, and the women that do get married wear white (70% of them have been living with their to be husbands); homosexuality is being accepted in the mainstream, and life must be fought for and protected, not welcomed and deemed precious in the public arena.

Nothing is right or wrong anymore......Does any of this stuff scare you?

2 comments:

Barbara Schoeneberger said...

Yes, it's very scary because we never know when we meet someone what their morals are. In years gone by, the probability of someone behaving responsibly and having a healthy sense of guilt for wrongdoing was a lot higher. Now we have to think defensively when we do something as simple as going shopping at Walmart.

Anonymous said...

Your story about the dog made me want to throw something. :/

I think it's probably always been this way, in terms of black/white vs. gray--just now we're more open about it. In other words, it was always that way but we weren't upfront about it. Now we don't pretend otherwise. Make sense?

I will say, though, that I see a lot of people (myself included) trying to turn as many issues into black and white as possible, and leaving charity by the wayside in the process. In the political realm, within the Church, we seem bent on dividing everything into us and them. There really is a lot of gray in the world, and it's just as damaging to try to turn gray things to black and white as it is to turn black and white things to gray.