A well qualified person told me yesterday that I am prophetic. He then went on to clarify that what is inferred by that label is that I see things in black and white. Right and wrong. It was, admittedly, the first time anyone had ever told me this but it wasn’t a revelation or a surprise. Yes, there is a fence in my world and actions fall on one side or the other. My personal belief is that nothing sits on top of the fence, suspended in air due to excuses or circumstances or history. Eventually, everything falls to one side of the fence and if you have to follow up an action or poor decision with an explanation….well, I think it’s clear. In my black and white world, it falls on the wrong side of the fence.
In this same conversation, I learned that people who have “gray area” thinking don’t really get people like me. To them, there are generally extenuating circumstances and surveying everything for consideration is how they choose what to do and what not to do.
As I was thinking about this last night, I did feel a little “pinned in” by the label. It sounded as though prophetic individuals never leave room for the benefit of the doubt and, believe me, I do. Maybe the most important difference between the two personalities of black/white and gray is that the gray thinkers don’t even have the fence in their life. Maybe there’s just a pasture of neutrality. A grassy knoll of good and bad decisions with full explanations attached for clarification.
That seems like a lot of work to me. I have a whole closet full of bad decisions and as I think about them, I still just think of them as stupid. Errant. Bad.
No excuses. Black.and.White.
