In my childhood, right and wrong were starkly delineated. Black and white. In my parent’s home, there was no middle ground, and when I tried to introduce a grey point, my mother’s answer was inevitable, “What’s right is right, no matter how bad it hurts.”
I don’t recall her ever explaining what she meant, I just knew. Doing the right thing wasn’t always easy or enjoyable or what I wanted, but it was the only valid path because it was right. My life made sense, it was safe. (This isn’t to say that I didn’t make mistakes and wrong choices, I certainly did, and I was often in trouble and on the outs with my mom, but I always knew why.)
Because of their unwavering belief of absolutes, my childhood was actually very simple. Two choices, no more.
Life now is so much more complicated. Our world doesn’t operate on a two-choice system. Diversions in the path aren’t simple forks. Choices abound, and each choice is advertised as a viable alternative – no matter how destructive or counter intuitive. When people like me (who subscribe to a belief system that still embraces the two-choice philosophy), share our thoughts, we are dismissed as outdated and out of touch at best, and often labeled as haters even when the underlying emotion isn’t hate but fear, shock, or confusion instead.
I long for the simplicity my parents’ outlook provided me. And honestly, I think others do also. It seems to me, in observing our world’s current state, that multi-forked paths have led us not into the city of enlightenment or villages of increased satisfaction but instead we’ve become lost in soggy marshes of uncertainty and mired in deeper and deeper despair. We’ve turned to all kinds of destructive and attention-getting tactics to combat our increased anguish. But to no avail. We blame religion, gun ownership, drugs, political parties, our government – we blame and we blame. Maybe all we need to do is bring back the concept of right and wrong, then make the right choices. Maybe the answer is as simple as the words a timid housewife taught me so many years ago. What is right is right, no matter how bad it hurts.
