Last week I was chatting with a friend. He was annoyed with someone and was in a foul mood. Talking with me gave him an outlet to vent his frustration. His comments were something like – so and so has done something which is very wrong. He doesn’t know that if I can be a very good friend I can be a very bad enemy too. For me either a person is good or bad. There’s nothing in between. And so it continued. Looking at his angry state I just listened to him. But it made me thinking. My mind went into flash back and started thinking of people who have come in my life who had similar thought process and who saw the people and events around them either in black or white. Which means either a person a good or bad, either he is a friend or enemy, either the situation is good or bad and so on and so forth. In the context of my friend, I was worried.

When the flash back started I started thinking about the traits of people who see life in terms of black and white. Often such people have extreme emotions of happiness and anger. So long as people around them conduct themselves in a manner that meets their expectations they are okay with it, but the moment they deviate there’s a clash. And as human beings it is not always possible to have a conduct that meets the expectations of anyone else all the time. So long as your views are similar to theirs, things are smooth but slightest of disagreement creates a discord. Such people always think in terms of friend or an enemy and mildest critique can convert the other person from the best friend to the worst enemy. For them there’s nothing in between. If you are not a friend it means you are an enemy. Since they normally have fierce and strong emotions, even a minor misunderstanding is disastrous. In the process the while others may suffer, biggest sufferer is they themselves. Not only that, often the relationships they develop don’t last long since at some point in time there’ll be disagreement which leads to break up. Normally, their relationships are also superficial since the people around them keep their real thoughts to themselves lest they end up antagonizing them. Unfortunately, such people are often dominating in nature. Which means, for any sustained association with them others need to surrender their thoughts and will to them. Due to this most people who have a divergent view of life slowly start trying to avoid them.

If this happens in the context of boss and subordinate it has some obvious fall outs. I’ve had an experience of such a situation for an extended period of time and today I’m saying this with a conviction of a person who’s been through all this. Such a boss will ensure that he is surrounded by people who only say ‘Yes Sir’, clap for everything he says and are often incompetent so that they are never a threat to him. Smart subordinates will feel suffocated under him since he wouldn’t give any space to their ideas and creativity. Often, the subordinates subordinates, two downs in corporate parlance, feel more comfortable with them. They see such people as very seniors and leaders who need to be followed and would never venture to air any divergent view. Such people often don’t foster creativity, talent, divergent views and competent teams. Irrespective of the hierarchical levels they may reach, they are not often remembered with respect. Reason I narrated this is to connect ourselves with real situations around us, be aware of some character traits and decide our own appropriate conduct. Unfortunately for me there was no one around to help me understand the complexity. Often it was perplexing to see that each and every suggestion given by me was seen with contempt where as a stupid remark made by fool was appreciated. But then in hind sight, I see that more than one person of this nature have crossed my path.

That brings us back to our original topic, of the life being grey. Life situations or people, in my view, can never be seen as black and white. As individual human beings we all have our strengths and weaknesses. There may not any person in this world who only has virtues and no faults and no person who has only faults and no virtues. However, while one person may have more strengths, other may have more weaknesses. Even the worst criminals may have some good aspects about them. And the best of people are still human beings and will have their weak points. Therefore to see people around us only as good and bad is fraught with danger. Instead, what we need to look in the people around us is their strengths and weaknesses, how can we leverage their strengths, accept and lower their weaknesses and find a common ground to work and live together despite these obvious strengths and weaknesses. If we don’t do that we will slowly keep adding ‘bad’ people around us since even ‘good’ people will do something that will not meet our expectations and will shift their category in our eyes. However in real life our focus often shifts to the weaknesses of others or disagreements that we have with them. A small dot of weakness or a view divergent from us starts looking as a large spot that overshadows large ‘good’ that the person may have. This makes an otherwise good person or a normal person start looking bad to us. Haven’t we seen many friendships broken, many relations becoming sour and teams broken due to minor action of person leading the other to think that he is ‘bad’, just because one person sees life and people in terms of black or white?

Something similar is applicable to our life situations. Often we see our lives as ‘good’ and ‘bad’. In my life I have come across many people who are complaining and worrying about future when everything in their lives was just perfect. They keep thinking and worrying about imaginary things like loss of job, poor rating, possible transfer, children not scoring well in the class etc. Their focus moves to few negatives in life at the cost of ignoring many good things that are present in their lives, spoiling an otherwise a good time. Similarly, when things are tough for us once again our tendency is to look at the negative part only and we see that everything I our life is bad. In reality, there may be many good things even in the deep of those bad times. Haven’t we heard of many imprisoned people using their free time either to study more or do good for the society which otherwise they would’ve never done. Crux of the argument is that we often want to see life as black & white. If there’s happiness, then there is no room for stress & if times are bad then no matter what, in our eyes everything is bad.

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that it’s important we see life and people around us in terms of shades of grey rather than black and white. No human being can only be good or bad. Everybody has shades of both. When we put someone on a very high pedestal it is a sign of danger since any humanly mistake committed by that person makes him fall down in the eyes of beholder. Similarly, assuming that a person is only bad prevents us from benefiting ourselves from many virtues that he may have. This is not to suggest that we must accept patently wrong conduct around us or accept such people, but to be aware that best of people will have some negatives because of which an otherwise good person should not be classified as a bad person by us. This is also necessary to calibrate our response towards some relations that can’t be or shouldn’t be broken, whether it is between blood relations, within family or working teams that we have in professional environment. While we need to ensure that we ourselves don’t fall in the trap of seeing the world as black or white, it is also essential to be aware of this behavioural trait in people around us and decide our conduct based on the importance of that relationship. This is equally applicable to situations around our life. Even the best situations will have some rough edges and worst situations will have some rosy patches. It’ll be a folly to expect only good things in life and also to classify some situations only bad. Accept life and people around us in the shades of grey, not black or white, and enjoy the journey.