The Great Gray Area

Sometimes, there are obvious distinctions between the right and wrong choices we’re faced with in life. Running a stop sign because you’re feeling careless is a bad choice. Returning the purse an elderly woman left in her shopping cart at the grocery store is a good choice. Continuing to date someone because you just don’t have the heart to dump him or her is a bad choice. Budgeting your income so you stay out of debt is a good choice.

Other times, what’s right and wrong can seem like a gray area where what’s right to some people may be wrong to other people. Examples: Your stand on abortion. Your career choice. Who the greatest musician in the world is. Your religious beliefs. What the best potato soup recipe is. The ways you cope with trauma.

If you love singing and performing and begin to earn a living by that, but your parents have dreamed of you being a doctor and are disappointed with your choice in professions, who is right? Each side of the argument has their own reasons for why they feel their perspective is the better one—the right one. If you’ve been abused and you’re being pushed by someone you love to go to therapy, but you’re putting it off because you’re not quite ready to face the painful road to healing, what is the right thing? If your friend refuses to try a new food because she’s a picky eater, is she wrong for that decision?

I have a bad habit of trying to please everyone. When something I do I upsets anyone, my own self esteem tends to drop and if I don’t do something to fix the feelings of whoever I may have hurt, I end up loathing myself.

The main problem with this habit is that everyone is different. What is a solution to an issue for me might cause even more problems for someone else if they were faced with the same situation. And when I do what I need for me, and someone else isn’t happy with my choice, I become painfully conflicted.

This all comes from the fact that I am not a priority for myself. I don’t value myself as something of importance the way I value other people, especially those that I love. It can make for a troublesome and difficult life.

But I have been slowly learning that I do matter. That may be the single most important lesson anyone can learn in this life.

You. You as a tiny being in this expansive and never ending universe–you do matter. The fact that you can feel both tangible objects and intangible emotions, that you can communicate, and that you have personality traits—those are the reasons you matter. The combination of physical genes that make up your hair color, eye color, jawline, nose shape, ears, and chin have never been paired with your sense of humor, taste buds, memories, and set of likes and dislikes ever before in all of history.

The greatest works of art and the most praised prose in the world are great because they are original. The big deal about those is that nothing like them had ever been seen before they were created.

You’re unique. You’re one-of-a-kind. You, as you are now, have never existed before. You have a favorite dessert, a favorite color, a song that brings a smile to your face, a smell that brings happy memories to your incomparable mind, a favorite pair of shoes, a preferred hairstyle, a set of wishes and hopes all like no one ever before! Those seemingly insignificant choices which define who you are–those are what make you matter. Those are all things in the gray area.

Regardless of what is right and what is wrong, remember that your right choices in the gray area are what make you a composition of never-before-seen human beauty.  Treat yourself with the love and respect that such a masterpiece deserves.