The Grays

I had become it. And didn't even know it. So oblivious to my own fading into the shades of gray I never wanted to be a part of.

My friend informed me some years back already that I might not be bitter, but I am definitely jaded. Taken aback at first at his comment about me, my beingness, I actually conceded to the fact. Yes, indeed, it WAS true. I had become jaded. Smothered under a huge serving of daily sarcasm.

Sarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt. To be sarcastic, meaning "Characterized by or involving sarcasm; given to the use of sarcasm; bitterly cutting or caustic”. The philosopher Thomas Carlyle despised it: "Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it". Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, recognized in it a cry of pain: Sarcasm, he said, was "usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."

So what was it that so coarsely and intrusively had invaded my Soul?

It wasn’t my life circumstances. I have no room to complain about anything past or present. Looking at myself realistically, it is an enviable Life I have lived. For one, as a woman, I have lived only in countries where I can do as I please. I get to choose how I want to live my life. No government or religion dictating what I have to do as a woman.

Take that in for a second.

As part of the work force, I have lived only in countries that protect my rights as a laborer. I actually have the ability to sue my employer if I so see fit.

Again, take that in for a second.

No getting up at the crack of dawn for me, physically laboring away until nightfall, without so much as a break to eat or pee, for the exchange of not even enough food or safe shelter.

So what was it that so coarsely and intrusively had invaded my Soul?

Simple enough. I had allowed myself to become not only surrounded, but penetrated by the Grays. What are the Grays, you wonder. The Grays are those people who are so engulfed in their own misery that they simply cannot sustain themselves without spreading their own poison, feeding off sucking out anything that is positive in their surroundings. Sadly enough we have to tolerate the Grays in certain circumstances, places where we can not walk away, like most work environments. Or some people have such people within their families, by blood or marriage, that it seems rather difficult to walk away at times.

But there are other strategies to employ. If you can’t remove yourself from the place the Grays are dwelling, recognize them for what they are. There is no fixing them. They don’t want to be any color of the rainbow. They thrive on oozing their gray misery all over anything they come in contact with. No matter what you do or say, they will only have something to say that will be not only negative, but will bring you down, if you allow it. Most do use the art of sarcasm to tear down others. Actually having pride in “being fluent in sarcasm”. Recognize yourself somewhere in there? I do. I definitely almost joined the masses of the Grays.

I woke up one day and realized that I do have that choice in how I want to feel. About myself, about my life, about my job(s), about anything that happens in any given day. And I didn’t want to be miserable anymore. So I chose to stop being infiltrated by the Grays. I recognize them now. It’s easier with every encounter. I don’t have to be around them for very long now before I tune into the smallest exposures of their well disguised misery. I shut them out now. There is no other way for me to deal with them. I do not engage in conversation, I do not reply to their comments, and any chance I get, I actually do walk away.