There has been a particular frustration that has run through my life towards the concrete, analytical, black-and-white world. I have written it off as the Romantic in me rejecting logic for an elusive dream, but this is a real issue in society when really broken down. When we look at the black/white, the green/red, the yes/ no, we're missing the gray, the yellow, and the maybe that ties it all together. Colors on the grayscale occur much more frequently than their subjective counterparts. Yellow lights are crucial for a smooth traffic system. The word maybe is what allows us to think further for ourselves instead of accepting what is provided. Our society has become extreme-obsessed with opinions and politics that everything now seems like a competition when in reality we all lay on different points on the grayscale and that is okay. The fallacy of gray defies categorization, because, in our complex world, it can't always be that simple.
Are you happy or are you sad? Personally, I am feeling simply okay today. Is that not extreme enough? Must I be ecstatically jumping around the room or devastated and crying on the floor? Is being okay not valid enough for my extremist society?
A few months back, I was coming home for Thanksgiving break. I find myself thinking too much on these two-and-a-half-hour drives with nothing but the company of my Bluetooth speakers and a cup of coffee. I realized how I always must take things to the extreme, pushing myself to my breaking point instead of moderation and balance. This is where my poem, "Windshield Wipers" was first drafted, on the voice memos app while driving down an empty highway in the mountains. Looking back, it expresses my frustration with the fallacy rather well, as a being dwindling in the gray feeling forced into categories.
Windshield Wipers
On my way home,
It starts to snow.
It’s not cold enough to stick,
Just stays there in sprinkles across my windshield,
Melting into each other.
I let the droplets pile up until I can’t see anymore,
Like the tears that I can’t stop from pouring out.
I always find myself here,
Pushing myself to the breaking point
When I could have clicked on my windshield wipers at any time.
I’d rather swerve off the road,
Lose all footing with reality,
Than to use my goddamn windshield wipers. I'm finishing this on a different day, realizing I didn't even know where I was going next when I started typing. I had been intrigued by something my Writing and Thinking professor had said in class while talking about rhetoric and somehow it has led me here, to an extended metaphor for my unbalanced life. It is a gen-ed class I have to take because I didn't score high enough on my eleventh-grade AP Literature exam, so most of my peers couldn't care less and I think I am actually the only English major who sits in that room from 12:30-1:35 Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I have a friend who sits behind me and rolls her eyes at his lectures because she's the black-and-white type of thinker, and I roll mine along with her, despite being enthralled by the shades of gray around me. It works out because she helps me stay in the loop during Statistics that we have together as it defies everything about the way my brain works and I lend her my lecture notes in return.
The first time I thought about the fallacy of the gray, I didn't know there was a term for it, nor did I even know what a fallacy was. Freshman year of high school, I was in a Gifted Humanities course which still impacts me deeply to this day. We were debating the differences between Classicalism vs. Romanticism and even taking a BuzzFeed quiz to see which one we fell into. I felt as though classicalism represented that black-and-white world fueled by logos and supported by corporations, government, and education; I hated it. Romanticism felt like a poem to me, like running through a European castle between beams of sunlighting coming in through the stained glass windows; I was enthralled.
Four years later, I am a freshman again, but now in university. I revisit this moment with a fresh pair of eyes after I read many more books, sat through many more lectures, and experienced many more experiences, and the whole situation seemed to be a fallacy itself. Things can't be always divided categorically into Classical or Romantic, life is much more complex. The Greek architecture of the Parthenon is extremely Classical and is now represented in our Government buildings, but the Parthenon itself is a former temple contributing to the romantic idea of devotion and higher power. The two ideas join together to create the complex world we live in. They allow me and my friend I sit next to in class to bounce ideas off of each other and offer different perspectives in light of our differences instead of against them.
The Ancient Greek ideology regarding education was composed of the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic and geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. These were the subjects taught to prepare one to think for themselves throughout life and are still the foundation of a liberal arts education. I chose to study at Susquehanna University for this foundation still followed today that not only teaches content deeply but builds character through it. Some of the "arts" could be considered Classic, while others Romantic, but they all work together to provide well-rounded character, and that is what the fallacy of the gray is about. The world is not all black-and-white, but it also is not all gray. Life is complex and there is so much beauty in that.
Thank you all for reading my super unorganized semi-existential thought process. I have been super busy recently because I have been trying to get really involved on campus this semester. Outside of classes, I have been attending Slam Poetry meetings, enjoying service and social opportunities with my sorority, and trying my best to stay involved. I decided not to continue with my end-of-the-month Sacred Sunday recaps anymore, but my goal is to still post at least once a month! See you all soon :)
-Emma Claire