The Grey Zones

This year is all about integrity for me. All throughout the last year and continuing into the new year, I keep seeing structures and systems crumble due to a lack of integrity within their very foundations. I think our integrity, how we handle ourselves one moment at a time, will be key to our evolution this year. In my head, I have the words of a senior dharma teacher who says: “karma means you don’t get away with nothing!”

I cannot help but notice a lack of integrity in so many places and relationships, and further, how often we keep quiet about it. We fail to address a problem because we lack the trust in ourselves, or the courage to face it. Or, despite an unhealthy dynamic in a particular relationship, we are afraid to upset the status quo.

The solution cannot be found in stating beautiful spiritual ideals alone – painting over what we do not wish to see with a big brush. We have to tackle our challenges one step at the time, one relationship at a time, one problem at a time.

We have to excavate into the grey zones, with the full knowledge that there is no quick fix. We have to sit with our situations, intimately, and sometimes painfully, until we can finally see the right path through to the other side of where we are going. My personal tactic is to approach any and all situations with a win/win strategy; fully aware that what needs to be done may be hard at times, for me and/or the other person. But, ultimately, the outcome will benefit all sides.

What else is there to do? We are not going to heal the world with our good intentions alone, they provide us with a moral compass, but the work still has to be done in the grey zones of our lives, one moment at a time.