The Beauty of Grey (or anal people suck)

The Beauty of Grey (or anal people suck)

I don’t understand people who blindly obey the rules without question. These people manifest their utter devotion to procedure by obeying every minor traffic law, which includes staying at least 5 clicks below the posted speed limit. These are the kinds of people who follow every catch-all rule at work, who file their tax on the first day permissible by law and who never, ever jaywalk.

These black-and-white people trouble me for several reasons, mostly because they’re annoying. Obviously, there are certain situations where you must strictly adhere to law, especially when someone’s safety is involved. But people who blindly obey every rule around are doing themselves a great disservice.

To begin with, when you look at something in a legalistic way, you begin to become close-minded. If everyone adhered strictly to the rules like, say, that really anal guy at work who reads the manual every month, we’d have a society of automatons incapable of making their own decisions; content to let the government or the boss or the mother think for them.

A very simple illustration occurred today. I was driving in Burlington, heading south on Walker’s Line when I noticed an ambulance heading northwards towards me. Like a good citizen, I pulled to the side of the road but I noticed that the northbound traffic had created a barricade against the ambulance. In their enthusiasm to follow the rules of the road, four cars had individually stopped at one lane each, thus blocking the paramedics from getting through. Ignoring the fact that the rules of the road actually instruct drivers to get out of the way of first-response vehicles any way possible, these drivers were so hung up on the red light in front of them, they didn’t move. I was so frustrated as I watched the seconds click by and these drivers shimmied their cars to and fro in a futile attempt to let the huge ambulance by. If it were me, I’d pull up to the curb, I’d run the red, I’d turn onto the perpendicular street—anything to let that ambulance go save a life. This dim-witted woman just sat there, unable to bring herself to run the red light. Eventually the paramedic had to talk her through it on his intercom: “Just drive through the light, Ma’am.” She was so programmed against running a red light, that she cost precious seconds to whatever victim the driver was trying to help.

That situation is merely a microcosm of a bigger world in which people try desperately to see things in a black-and-white way. I’m an idealist and I’m trying to become more of a realist (minus the cynicism, which I have in spades). In conversation with my Brother-in-law, I started to realize that sometimes it’s not possible to attain the ideals we set for ourselves, and to hold our politicians to those goals is unrealistic. I think certain standards of human rights should be met worldwide, of course, but if we keep looking at things as night and day, black and white, we won’t get anywhere. To quote the band Live, “It’s not a black and white world/ to be alive, the colors [sic] must swirl/ and I believe that maybe today/ we will all begin to appreciate the beauty of gray [sic].”

Now I’ve gone way off topic. To summarize, anal people suck.