- Black & White
- Right & Wrong
- You & Me
- Mine & Yours
- The light and the dark
These are all ways we view the world around us. They exist at the ends of a spectrum. Dualistic, extreme, polarized. What about all the things in-between? All the shades of gray that exist between black and white, between right and wrong, between you and me?
Each of these opposites cannot exist without the polarizing opposite. How can you see the light unless you know what the dark is? How can you be right unless you can also be wrong?
But what about the middle, where things are less exact, less defined, and more nebulous, hazy and vague? That’s where it gets difficult. We like to see things like this or that, black and white. It’s easier, less gray, less nebulous. We like things to be clear and exact.
What if we look at all the things in-between the polarized ends of the spectrum. Is this what Rilke is talking about here?
“Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Is it that he asking that we take our strengths, certainty and polarized views and stretch them out, separate them from each other? In doing so we may be able to see the spaces in-between them, the gray areas, the faint shadows of God.
But what does this all mean?
What are our well-disciplined strengths? Are these what cause us to see right and wrong, black and white, good and bad? What happens when we stretch them between the “two great opposing poles”?
When we start to see reality differently, as a Rainbow of Gray, our polarized views start to fracture and fall apart.