Thick Shades of Gray

I've seemingly always drawn hard lines in the sand. Good things and bad things. Right things and wrong things. Only I'm beginning to understand that you can't make yourself want what's good for you. You can't make yourself want what is good for other people. 

You can't choose your heart. 

When your whole being screams freedom and adventure and waking up late when you should be at your desk job with banker's hours and a civic duty to preserve, what do you gravitate towards? 

All our lives we are told to hold on to our heart's desire. We read books and watch movies that chant, "follow your heart," in the very thread of their existence, and yet.. Somehow, we can't.

We are not monotonous creatures, though. We are vibrant. Taught to thrive. It's in our being to test norms. To live outside comfort zones. Survival of the fittest. Our fight or flight technique still pulling us towards that fire, away from the danger, but towards something that fate won't touch. Towards something our short lives can fathom. 

Because, we want that dull ache in our heart. 

We don't care if it's pointing us towards ruin; we can't help it. 

The hard lines become blurred, nonexistent. Shades of gray become prominent. 

Sometimes we need to dive head first into disaster for a moment. We have a heart that possesses ruin. We need to let down our walls of civic duty, appointments, and shallow smiles. 

We need to follow our heart; albeit a heart that may be untrustworthy. Life is a catastrophe.

A beautiful, catastrophe; a disaster nonetheless.

But it's important. 

I've fallen in slow admiration for this catastrophe. For the possibility of chaos. 

I've fallen in love with my short fuse for ignorance, and yet my perpetual desire for company. I've come to adore the way I want to write a book, but every time I write, I start to read. The very definition of an oxymoron has grown to describe me. 

And I no longer draw hard lines in the sand. I paint the world in thick shades of gray. Your gray and mine. 

So I say let yourself mingle between the space of your heart's desire, and your civic duty, between right and wrong and good and bad. Because this is where magic exists. This is where love is.