Shades of Grey...

When you are a child you see the world in black and white. Emily often refers to things as 'mine' or 'yours' and she wants things to be ordered and to have a place or person to belong to. For example a few weeks ago she points to the hoover and asks,

"Yours mummy?"
"No baby (although I know that I am the only one who ever uses it so you could be forgiven for thinking that it may be mine but) no the hoover does not belong to mummy. It belongs to...well the house I guess."

All humour aside though, it is only once you have left your childhood, adolescence and even your early twenties behind that you start to realise that the world has incredible shades of grey. That our lives are a mass of greying contradictions and that in reality nothing is ever as clear cut as we might have thought or hoped. Practicality takes presidence over perfection and the older you get the more you learn to accept, to reside and adapt. 


Take our families and relationships. Some of us will have grown up with this ideal about the 'perfect family', however the reality of our adults lives could be very different. Lets take a typical scenario, a young girl dreams of meeting 'Mr Right' (that elusive figure), getting married and settling down to have 2.4 children and trust me there are still many girls and even women that dream this dream. But well they have reached 30 and Mr Right has still not materialised, although there have been a fair few 'Mr Right Now', 'Mr Wrong' and 'Mr what the hell was I thinking I must have been insane or extremely drunk' and they start to hear the tick, tock, tick, tock. So they endeavour to find the alternative, the shade of grey, the 'Mr he is nice and makes me smile'. They get married, have children and maybe live the rest of their lives happyish. 


Alternatively some people will meet who they think is 'Mr Right' fall madly in love and give themselves completely over to him. Only to find out a few years and a baby later that actually although at first everything seem very black and white, somewhere along the way they have slipped into greyness and are not quite sure how it happened.

There are of course many other examples that I could give but well I have to return to College in 20 minutes and beside my jacket potato with cheese is getting cold! So...


I am not stating that this is the way it has to be for all of us. I think there must be some extremely happy and contented people out there. People living in a world of black and white where they are safe and secure, the kind of people that never have a grey day. It's just that I have never met any of them but then maybe I don't get out enough. I think what I am trying to say is that we all learn to compromise and accept people for who they are. It's a part of growing up and if you love someone then you learn to live with your differences. You learn to accept the grey. 


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Oh and as a finally thought I would like to strongly voice that this entry is in no way a cry for help. Purely an observation based on conversations that I have been privy to recently. So please dear friends (the ones that read this blog) please don't worry I am simply ruminating on life and relationships and am quite happy with my lot. I except the grey, it is a part of who I am.