It seems like one of the developmental tasks of adulthood is coming to recognize, accept, and maybe even appreciate the "grayness" of life. Not every decision is black and white, not every experience is totally positive or negative, no person is all good or all bad. My acceptance of grayness has been maybe longer in coming than for most. I've always wanted to know the answer, to seek some absolute truth, to have a definitive solution to a problem. Long ago I learned to love my gray hair. Now I've found I'm beginning to enjoy the inherent ambiguity and uncertainty of life...well, sometimes.
My new problem is that we tend to have fewer ways to talk about the middle. Our vocabulary emphasizes extremes. There are so many words for anger: irate, incensed, outraged. There are words for calm; peaceful, serene, tranquil. But what do we call something inbetween...."okay"? "Happy"? They seem weak and ineffectual. Other choices might be ambivalent, conflicted, uncertain, accepting. But they all have a somewhat negative connotation. I guess we have experimenting, exploring, discovering, at least those words convey some sense of wonder and excitement, but I think they also imply that there is an endpoint, a treasure at the end of the road.
It is not only language that troubles me, but gestures as well. What is there between a handshake and a kiss? Is it a hug? How do you convey a sense of closeness and friendship without a sexual connotation? With non-romantic interests a hug works well, if you are a hugger. But what about that in between category of "possibles"? People living in your gray zone. People with whom there is no romantic intent (yet), but with whom there is emotional,but not physical, intimacy (at least not now). A hug might give the wrong impression, but doing nothing feels wrong, too.
I think if we, as adults, are to truly embrace our gray, we need better words!!!
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