I remember the clarity of my youth when I was certain about everything. Things were clearly right or wrong, good or bad. Love was supreme and war was reviled. Democracy was good, communism was bad. My friends and I were child activists, picketing the sale of war toys at a nearby \u00e2\u20ac\u0153five and ten cent store\u00e2\u20ac\u009d — GI Joe Must Go — and savvy enough to call the local TV station and end up on the evening news.<\/p>\n
It was the 1960s. Our ideology was nonviolence. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flower Power!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We were in favor of passive resistance and free speech. We marched WITH Dr. King and we marched ON Washington. We sang the songs of Bob Dylan (“Blowin’ in the Wind<\/a>” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’<\/a>“) and Phil Ochs (“There but for Fortune<\/a>“). <\/p>\n In our teenage and college years our concepts grew a little deeper but still we held to a simple clarity of right and wrong. Quality was of higher value than quantity. We knew journalists to be reporters and fact-checkers who would not dream of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmaking news\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or becoming celebrities unto themselves. Without question, substance was supremely more important than style. I knew what I believed in, believed that I was right, and that fueled my confidence.<\/p>\n I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know when it changed, but the light began to fade and our vision required corrective lenses. When I was 42, a friend referred to me as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a woman of a certain age,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning, of course, that I was no longer a kid. I thought of myself as principled, but perhaps I was just naive? Answers to questions large and small no longer seemed so simple. I noticed style was rewarded even when substance was absent. Was it time to pay more attention to style, at least as it pertained to self and one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future. I had improbably survived a stage four cancer and the graying temple hairs were now very noticeable — perhaps it was time for a little hair color and a brand new attitude. Time to grow up and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcget ahead,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 whatever that means. <\/p>\n Get ahead? I invested in myself, looked good, worked hard and made a little money too. But the work was just for money, devoid of passion and not all that enjoyable. I watched my husband and others around me – the happiest and the healthiest of them were passionate about their work. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry, be happy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sounds good, but how to pay one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bills? Can one seek both money and happiness? Somewhere I took a wrong turn, another of life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s detours.<\/p>\n Fifteen more years have gone by and I no longer color my hair. I am once again clear about my likes and dislikes, ideology is back, BUT I have come to accept that nothing is simple, there is no clear black and white, right and wrong, just lot of pros and cons. There are many applicable quotations:<\/p>\n Some phrases seem almost cliche, but their points are well-taken. I evaluate life’s compromises on a case-by-case basis. Embracing the gray is my new mantra for navigating life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s path. For this Libra, life is now a game of balance, and the prizes to be sought on every given day are the little bits of color one finds while unraveling the tangled layers of gray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember the clarity of my youth when I was certain about everything. Things were clearly right or wrong, good or bad. Love was supreme and war was reviled. Democracy was good, communism was bad. My friends and I were child activists, picketing the sale of war toys at a nearby \u00e2\u20ac\u0153five and ten cent … Continue reading “Gray is more than a hair color”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hmmm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Life is a journey, not a destination.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u2022 Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/a><\/ol>\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u2022 William Keane<\/a><\/ol>\n\nYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a8\u00e2\u20ac\u2022 Arthur Ashe<\/a><\/ol>\n