I have noticed that the world is increasingly black and white in the eyes of many people. Things are either good or evil; decisions are either right or wrong and the people who make them either heroes or villains.

I find this migration to extreme ends of the spectrum of life worrisome and admittedly also annoying.

Life of course is never so simple as people would prefer. It is often profoundly complicated. Decisions that seem easy from the outside are often fraught with varying levels of concern depending upon who is making it and it they are perhaps, part of a group.

Experience has taught me that extremists are dangerous. Those on the extreme left and those of the extreme right – they are dangerous and often simple-minded and sole-purposed and willing to create a great deal of pain and suffering for the cause of their version of white (or black as the case may be).

Extremists find it easy to demonize other people. They find it easy to hate the one whose decision or views do not match their own and the ones who enjoy stoking the fires of their perspective with choice tidbits of info that map to their viewpoint are as culpable as the ones on fire. This is frightening and anti-human. It is also anti-community.

Life, a good life, a life where we are neighbours, requires a more nuanced, blended perspective. Life is neither black nor white…it is grey and carries all the beauty of an Ansel Adams photograph with a million shades to be seen making life come to life.

Here’s to the grey way…