This morning I woke up to an email from a good friend of mine asking me to read and provide feedback on his most recent blog post. We have previously worked together and for a time I ghost wrote/edited/shut down his pieces for news outlets as well as his own blogs. Our very different writing styles provided for a fun mashup. However, one of my biggest overarching criticisms of his writing is that he writes in generalized absolutes. By that I mean that he makes a statement about all people being a certain way. For example, he might say “All people who wear pink like horses.” Whereas I would lob back “Many of the people I have met who wear pink also like horses.” Now, saying that wearing pink and liking horses are related is a statement with relatively low, if any, negative repercussions. At the risk of giving away who I am talking about, a more likely thing he might write is “People who watch the Jersey Shore are stupid.” That statement has, when written, a number of negative repercussions.

1. Someone who watches the Jersey Shore feels immediately insulted. (I watch it on occasion and am pretty sure I am not stupid)
2. They stop reading your article/blogpost or stop watching your show to avoid further insult.
3. They, who you are actually trying to target and convert to your cause, never get the point of what you wrote because they were so turned off in the first few lines.

Basically, you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

What I am talking about here are, in a generalized form, grey areas. Grey areas are awesome. When we find ourselves in a grey area ideologically it is like being in a big swimming pool, we start trying to swim for the closest wall but each time we get close to one we realize it isn’t the one we should be at. My friend, understandably, seems to be so afraid of them that he would rather go for an absolute statement that alienates people then be in the middle.

A physical example that I like to throw around is the length of a girls work skirt. It used to be that if your knees were showing it was inappropriate. Today that rule doesn’t hold. We know when a girls skirt is much to short because everyone stares and whispers about her in the office. We know that there isn’t really a situation where someone’s skirt is too long. What we don’t know is the exact length at which a skirt, no matter the wearer, passes from appropriate to inappropriate. To address this we make rules that err on the side of caution rather that tawdriness.

Similar to the wearing pink and liking horses example, the skirt length example is not one that really stimulates my brain. Yeah, it might come up at the weekly company meeting, but it rarely invigorates anyone for any length of time. Some fun and cerebrally stimulating grey areas are:

• Is telling a lie always wrong? 
• What won’t you forgive?
• What is morality?
• Any moral/life/ethical question you have pondered frequently but every time you think: “This is so confusing!”

Have fun in the grey areas rather than immediately choosing a side. They are often where the most stimulating conversation and satisfying results come from.