The black. The white. And the greys.

Yes, people have told me this. My mother had told me this when I was ten or something.
I did'nt get it. And I did'nt get that I did'nt get it.
I think what she meant was the diversity of emotions and the subtle distinction between each.
There is no clear good. There is no one good bad. What is moral for one may be completely intolerable by another. yes, in ramayana, we saw that Ram was good (why? because he was the son of a king? because he was powerful? because he was obidient enough to leave his throne? maybe yes. that's why). And Raavan was bad, beacuse he stole another's wife. Fair enough. Bad guy.
We quietly skip over the part where Ram makes Seeta go through fire to prove her purity.
Is that goodness? No. badness? Not really.
Today I watched The Artist. The movie has a different storyline, but it brings out a lot of these subtle emotions we have.
Goodness includes sympathy; at times motivated by pride, which is bad.
Badness includes weakness; whcih can stem through the most genuine of reasons is the world. Lust, greed, or even Ram's duty.
Goodness had bad in it and badness has good. And if you look at it together, there are just a myriad of sublte emotions. All in shades of grey.
I think we all can figure it out when it comes to ourselves.
It just gets tremendously messed up when it comes to others. Because you dont know how much of good-bad or how much of bad-good is there in them. You just cant know.
You just have to trust your luck.

Its not like we have a choice.

Growing up is a pain.
Not when you start texting or chatting or sriving or start being responsible for your own shit in life, but when those homogenous concepts are challenged. The biggest deal of all, I think is reciprocation. This struck me when I watched the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. the part where Imran meets his dad, with so much emotion and his dad states that his priorities were different, which is completely true and understandable. And if his priorites were indeed such, he did the right thing for all involved by leaving his child. A messed up ego, unaccomplished dreams et al would have made matters worse. But thats not what I am talking about. It is the non-reciprocation of Imran's emotion that hit him, in all probablity. The lack of emotion on seeing his son. He just did"nt feel the emotion. What could he do? It was not his fault. He didnt feel it and he did'nt fake it.
Imran would just have to deal with it. And he did.
There are many people like Imran. Many many of them. We all learn to deal with it, I guess.
I think that is when you grow up. When you realise that everyone has the right to say, "boss, it may mean the world to you, but its just not that big a deal to me."
You close in, enjoy what you have and stop expecting from others. When your parents' hand me down logic that, "you give it your very best, you will be rewarded with the very best" fails.
Life ceases to be in a straight forwards exam like pattern and becomes a collection of exceptions.
Its pretty shitty to grow up.
But its not like anyone has a choice.