Late Night theories...

"People are complex. They are not good or bad, black or white. I think labels are destructive. The choices we make, especially when we're young, don't decide who we are. They just add to the people we are becoming." --Sage Baker on Priveleged

It's the occasional little gems like this quote that form the reason I watch much of what I do on television. This particular quote sums up my theory on life in a few short, perfectly worded, sentences.

It came at the end of an episode in which I smiled in pride at the way they tackled the same sex marriage issue with two men planning their wedding and then frowned in disgust when they showed only the first moments of the ceremony just to skip to the reception, never showing the vows and thus glazing over an important part for many viewers...including myself.

It came at the end of an episode in which a girl must face the fact that her religous boyfriend isn't open to new experiences in life being rather content with the limited experiences he already has and therefore must make the hard decision to break off the relationship and thus making me tear up (they were such a cute couple!!!).

It came at the end of an episode that contained as many ups and downs as my own life in the span of an hour instead of 28 years. An episode that left me feeling inspired and alive.

You see, my belief in life is that people are complex. We are all made up of a menagerie of experiences and lessons learned. There is no black and white, good and bad. It's all gray area to me. Every circumstance must be judged on an individual basis based upon that person's experiences and their lives up to that point. What is good for one is not necessarily good for the next.

Everything that happens in one's life makes up the person they become. If I do a bad thing, that doesn't make me a bad person. It makes me human. My childhood was full of abuse, negative feelings, and a large dose of heartache along with the good memories. As a teen, I made mistake after mistake. As an adult, I have made bad decisions and put myself ahead of others when I shouldn't have. And yet, I can't bring myself to regret a moment of anything that has happened in my life. I regret causing pain to others. I regret how I reacted at times. But I do not regret the actual events that have taken place in my life. It has all shaped and formed and molded who I am right this minute.

"The choices we make, especially when we're young, don't decide who we are. They just add to the people we are becoming."

So give people the chances they deserve. Realize that life is in the journey. Allow everything you experience and every choice you make to mold you into the best person you can be.

Maybe we'll all have it master by the day we die. One can only hope.

((Yeah. This is the type of thing I think about in the late night hours when the kids are sleeping and the Hubby is off working on his snowmobile. It doesn't happen often that I get quite this deep in thought. Hope it was a nice change of pace.))