Shades of Gray

I went shopping for the perfect shade of gray today. It was a good day to shop for gray. The sky was gray. The sea was gray. My mood was the grayest of all. I was craving change, and a gray accent wall for the living room seemed right.

Do you have any idea how many shades of gray there are in the world? I am guessing that there is an entire industry built around just the naming of the shades. Let me mention a few of the hundreds: dusky dawn, maiden mist, gray glimpse, Inverness gray, tundra frost, shark (I liked that one), steel me, silent smoke . . .

Once before, I attempted gray in the living room. I'd returned from a trip to Greece, and my world no longer seemed to fit me, so I impulsively went out and bought the perfect shade of gray for my walls. I spent an entire weekend painting, blissfully. Unfortunately, the weekend was gray (like this one) and a few days later, when the sun shone, I found my walls looked more like LAVENDAR than gray. This is when I learned that there are many shades of gray, from the blue end of the spectrum, to the brown, with a universe in between. A few weeks later, I re-grayed my lavender walls, a color closer to the "shark" gray I'd mentioned.

Writing about paint chips is really just a backdoor entry point for something I am pondering on this gray day: Do I fight it, or do I let it in? For years, I labored moods as "good" or "bad" and I battled back the gray when it started to creep in the way the fog seeps up the canyon here. I kept busy. I turned the music up. I I went faster. I brought "fake it 'til you make it" to a new level. It's as if I hammered away on the same few notes on the key board, and never went too low or too high, away from the "happy zone. Gray was off limits.

To write a symphony, you need the whole keyboard, not just a few major notes in the middle. Today, I let the gray stay. I explored its subtleties, and they are as many as the variations in the paint chips I described. It is uncomfortable here. If I can make my peace in this place, a place that feels like nothing at all, a place where I have not permitted myself the distraction of dreaming up something better than this moment, if I can do that . . . If I can do that, maybe I'll be able to find another name for gray, and finally say "yes" to some of the moments that don't offer eye candy to the psyche. If I can say "here" to this, and even a tentative "yes," well, that will be enough for a Sunday. My gray is not Inverness Gray or even Monterey Gray. I name you Gracious Gray.

Isn't Gray a very spacious place, after all? We say something is a "gray area" when it is not clear, neither black nor white. In my experience, very few things are really black or white. We grope through the gray, making our clarity one footstep at a time, inventing it as we go. Gray is the norm, not the exception. I think it feels uncomfortable because by embracing gray, I give up the illusion of control, of knowing. Gracious Gray has a lot to offer. It holds possibilities. It just doesn't offer answers, unless the answer is "here, this moment and place, they are enough."