Different shades of grey

This is a piece of writing I've been thinking about writing for a while but I haven't gotten around to it until now. So here it goes.

Many people see the world in black or white, good or evil, winners or losers and so on. I don't, in my view it's all different shades of grey. I believe everything happens for a reason, there's an explanation to everything and if there is none then no explanation has been given or you do not understand the explanation.

Why people choose to see the world in black or white may have different reasons. Some see it as an easier way to view life; it gets too complex to get down to every detail. Some may truly believe that there is nothing in between good and evil; I call this the fanatic approach. In my understanding these people keep a sort of score list. If you do this you are good and their best friend, but if you do that then you are suddenly on the bad guys list and are avoided like the plague. That's what scares me; they don't se life as it is, instead the put people and things in two boxes. And they don't see the flaws of the things and people in "the good box" or the good qualities in "the evil box".

In my view there is nothing evil that doesn't bring a bit of good and vice versa and everything in there between. One of the more interesting things I've read is a comparison of two unknown people and you are being given their qualities and asked which person you would hire for an important job. The first one doesn't drink or smoke. He's a vegetarian, somewhat of a workaholic and loves dogs. The second one drinks large quantities of whiskey every day and it starts at breakfast. Well most of us would hire the first one but it's then revealed that the first one is Adolf Hitler who tried to bring evil into this world and the second person is Winston Churchill who stopped him.

People do what they do for different reasons. But what remains the same even among insane people is the sense of reasoning. It's the sense of perception that has been altered. Either they are born like that or some significant event has made them see reality in an altered way. Difficult people, racists, killers and crazy people have all a different degree of altered perception of the world. There is no excuse for the evil things they do but there is a reason that can be understood, even insanity. If you saw how the world was being taken over by demons that where out to get you what would you do? You would probably try to kill the demons. Now we "normal" people now that this isn't happening but that is how an insane person see the world and reacts to it. The same way we normal people would react if we saw the world in the same way they do. The sense of reasoning is always intact and everything can be explained trough it.

And then we have the "Mother Theresa"-type of people. They dedicate their lives to do good. I would bet a lot on that some of them do all that good for the fame and glory instead of the kindness of their good hearts. I believe that there are people out there with truly good hearts but not all that look and sound like ducks are actually ducks. There is always going to be a few flaws in the personalities of good people, even among saints.

So my conclusion is, there are no black and white, only different shades of grey. So try to see the world as it is, not what you think it is…