red.light.green.light.

Robin Hood tells me fairly often that he doesn't like grey area. He prides himself on not seeing grey unless he has to. My life, (except apparently when it comes to group projects), is grey area. I like the shades of grey in things and they comfort me.

Sometimes though, I miss the absoluteness of childhood. I remember when things were either right or wrong; traffic lights were paramount examples of the concreteness of things. Red means stop. Green means go. Orders came from the powers that be, and provided you had consistent parents, it was clear what would happen when you crossed the line from right to wrong. Laws were laws and you didn't break them because you just can't break laws. The simplicity of this life is something I miss from time to time. I'm just realizing that I'm more than a little bipolar about grey vs. black and white (isn't that ironic...) and that as I'm getting older, I'm valuing decisions that only involve two choices more and more. It is so much easier to decide rather than deliberate, consider, weed out and choose. When there are only two options, your decision is made once something becomes better than the other.

It's annoying that as we grow up and become more intelligent and experienced we're always creating more choices for ourselves. Things aren't right or wrong, they're situational. You can decide how you feel about something, only to add a context that makes you change your mind. It's no wonder we're indecisive as young adults (and old adults), and often seem frozen like deer in headlights with possibilities: we have so many.

I can't blame Robin Hood for trying to make everything he can black and white when the alternative is paralyzing numbers of options. When red means stop, except when it's blinking (which means stop, then proceed with caution) or has been red for five minutes (and means it's broken so proceed with caution when able) then it's not all that different from green, which means proceed with caution, except when there is an ambulance behind you (when it means stop) or someone runs a red light (when you should put that caution to good use and stop before you hit them). How can we move forward when there are so many pathways there? Won't some of them, inevitably, take us sideways? Is there a direct route of dichotomous choices to take us where we want to go? I think even Robin Hood would agree there's not. So it is and will continue to be: complicated.