Entropy

[anigo]

It's funny how you can have a horribly insightful post rattling around in your head all day until such time as you go to share it with the world and it makes itself scarce.

Well, let's see what we can dig up, shall we?

One of the things that dawned on me the other day is how much I feel the need to see things in black or white. There are no shades of gray for me. It's either good or bad. Wrong or right. All or nothing.

Par exemple:

Lets take my job. It has its ups, it has its downs. When my job is great, it's WONDERFUL. When any sort of "not great" comes into it, it suddenly becomes HORRIBLE. I seriously consider finding other employment, which most of the time is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. But shades of grey leave me so completely off kilter that I *HAVE* to make it either white or black. I'm completely thrown off balance.

This goes for people too. There are people who have personality traits I don't like. My tendancy is to avoid these people altogether. Not so much because the trait annoys me, but more because my inability to make a decision which camp to put the individual in causes such unrest in me. On the other side of that coin, if people don't carry these personality traits, and I've put them in the "Good" side of the spectrum, this means they're good. Period. Good People. Fun to be around. Used to hang out with Mother Theresa... And what does this lead to, ladies and gentlemen? DISAPPOINTMENT! Nobody is inherently good. (Just in case you didn't know that.) So why set yourself up for that?

Or here. LJ is good. I love LJ. I must read LJ constantly. LJ is fun. LJ used to hang out with Mother Theresa. Suddenly, insert a shade of grey. UHOH! LJ is bad. LJ is evil. LJ must be assimilated. But its not, really, is it. It's neither bad nor good. It's just varying shades of "somewhere in the middle"

Or even myself. Either I'm on top of the world or squished under it.

I think that part of the reason I'm put on this earth is to come to terms with the fact that there really is no black or white, but rather varying shades of gray. My mission is to stop trying to push something to be black or white, but rather to let it be whatever colour it is and accept it for that.

Note to self: I have not been put on this earth to fight entropy. It's like trying to stop the tide coming in with a shovel and pail.

Oddly enough, this made MUCH more sense rattling around in my head.

Comments

[sweet-violet.livejournal.com]

I think you have something here... this is a very good post, very insightful - and you know it's hardest to be insightful about oneself or even worse, to put thoughts to words...

I suffer from the other condition, I think. I tend to see more shades of grey than any black or white. Throughout my life I have never liked extremes of one thing or the other, and this gets me into trouble because I have been known to give people or situations more credit than they might be due... I know this probably makes me too naive...

But somewhere along the way, I've learned to compensate somewhat by being alert to things/people/situation that tend to get too dark grey, if you know what I mean... This came as a hard lesson from dealing with the heartbreak of my failed first marriage. There were things that I kept rationalizing into the grey, rather than allowing myself to see the black. Consequently, when the end came, it was like being hit with a cast iron frying pan to the back of the head....

Ouch.

[anigo.livejournal.com]

Ouch indeed.

I think that I, too, see things in many shades of grey, but I think my tendancy is to try to categorize them into either black or white. To try to take the grey thing and squish it into the white box instead of saying "Hey look, it's grey. Cool". In the end it all works out badly because the grey thing shouldn't be in the white box and I am left confused and/or hurt because it didn't fit.

[gunhed.livejournal.com]

It's funny how you can have a horribly insightful post rattling around in your head all day until such time as you go to share it with the world and it makes itself scarce.

I know that feeling. I'm experiencing it right now. I'm trying to come up with an insightful reply but I'm drawing a blank.

So I'll just say that I thought that was an excellent post.

[anigo.livejournal.com]

Well thank you. I aim to please :)