This morning right after getting my daily coffee (because like some people, I too, am not a fully functional human being until I get caffeinated) had an interesting encounter with someone I had a class with last semester. We are both government majors and are very passionate about the upcoming presidential election. He started out by asking when my state's primary is and then proceeded to tell me about his love for Ted Cruz. Because we had class together last semester, I knew that he had fairly conservative views, but I had no idea they were this extreme. He went on to tell about how he thinks the country should go back to a more strict view of the Constitution and empower the states more via the Tenth Amendment.

While he was talking, I sat there quietly listening to him talk about his views about the government’s role and what he thinks should be done. I disagreed with some of what he was saying while thinking about how I don’t really care for the presidential candidate he strongly supports. I listened anyway because it’s important to listen to others who see things differently than you do. He’s very intelligent and can back up reasoning for his beliefs which was nice to hear, but then like always, he started name calling candidates and political figures.

One thing that he said that struck me was that he said, “The world is very black and white. It’s clear what the decisions should be.” I would have rebutted and wanted to continue our conversation but the caffeine had not quite kicked in yet and we had class starting in just a few minutes.

I would have to disagree with my former classmate when he says that the world is black and white. I believe that the world actually is this very gray and messy place. It is so much more complicated than a simple right-or-wrong question or answer. We have very little facts but many different beliefs. The facts, proven cases of evidence that are definite are limited. Too many people think that their beliefs are facts, so that is where they get this sense that the world is black and white. It’s easy to categorize things that we are unfamiliar with as black or white within the limits of our beliefs, except that there is one problem; not everyone thinks the same as one another. This leads to the black and white worlds to mesh together to become this gray void we live in.

It’s uncomfortable living with the unknown, so we have different belief systems in hopes to understand aspects of life that we cannot see, control, or explain. It is like driving at night in the fog and you can’t really see what’s too far ahead of you, but your headlights, like our different beliefs, shine some light on what is directly in front of us to help steer us in the right direction. Since we are all driving in the midst of the fog, our headlights only go out so far. It is not uncommon that we bump into each other, confused and self-assured that we are going the right way.

As we are driving through life, we all are put in crossroads which we may not know what is going to happen or what which is necessarily the right or wrong way to go. Our headlights can't break the gray void completely. Maybe the way that we think is wrong, but someone else thinks it is the right way for them. There is no way of knowing which path to take is for sure the definite one. After one crossroad, further down the road, there are many more to come while continually in the fog that we are all driving through. It's okay that we all in the fog, we all lost and don't have the answers to all the problems that may arise as we continue to drive. But sometimes we get too comfortable in the gray, and start to see things as black or white and right or wrong when really we have no idea where we are driving to or where we might end up.

So to go against what my former classmate said that life is black and white; rather it is a gray world filled with diverse ideas and people which make it the beautiful mess that we live in.