Thursday, February 3, 2011

Have any of you looked at a zebra before? I mean…really scrutinized one? The way it’s stripes converge, the overlapping edges blurring ever so slightly. There’s nothing more perfect or anything that more closely represents life.

I have a personal motto: life is not black and white, so dare to live in the grey. Inspired by my lifelong passion of zebras, it is a code I strive to live my life by. A positive mindset I opt to exact in all that I do.

Right now, the world is in a state of flux. Is that good? Bad? Will it forever change the course of history? The answers to these questions, much like those blurred lines where a zebra’s orderly stripes converge, aren’t clearly defined. Instead, they’re in an evolving state, the outcome of which is uncertain. And that’s okay.

There are those who need things to fall into neat little categories. But life isn’t neat and tidy. Nor does it conform to our will. Try as we might to alter events, some things will play out to their own tune no matter how hard we attempt to steer them in a different direction.

Does this mean we should stop caring? No. Or that we should stick our heads in the sand, ignoring what’s going on around us. No. Does it mean that life will be a constant bed of roses? No! There are passages through life that will…just…plain…suck!

So what do we do when we’re feeling beat down by life, overwhelmed by the dire state of world affairs or fall short of our goals? Well, I can’t speak to what others do to get by, but for me, I think of zebras. How gorgeous they are. How fierce. How not a single one of them bears the same stripe pattern and yet what most view when gazing at them is the same pattern. I concentrate on how the black stripes diverge from the white ones. And then, once I’ve contemplated all of that, I allow myself to get lost in the grey fuzzy blur of where those neat and orderly zebra stripes merge, knowing that is where the real discoveries and growth will transpire.