Life is either black or white?

I watched two boys fighting yesterday. I do not have a clue what it was all about and I did not stop to ask I just cycled on. Gone seem to be the days when I would have stopped and tried to intervene. Society is such now that good intentions are so often easily misinterpreted. So many of the things we see that in the past we might have tried to put right is left and in the long run it can only get worse. 

As I near the fag end of my life I can reflect and say with hand on heart that I only ever had one fight . It was during my school days and I really cannot remember what it was about at all, but it was enough for two punches to be thrown. 

I was reported to the headmaster by the other boys parents.  We were both called to the headmasters room in the presence of the mother of the boy. When we both walked in  and the mother saw her son standing next to me her whole attitude changed. He stood towering over me, I was after all the smallest boy in the class. The headteacher asked us what it was all about and in the end we were asked to shake hands and go back to our classes. A storm in a teacup. 

This reminded me of another boy telling of a similar experience this time with a clever and wise teacher.

When I was in school, I got into a major argument with a boy in my class. I have forgotten what the argument was about, but I have never forgotten the lesson I learned that day.

I was convinced that “I” was right and “he” was wrong – and he was just as convinced that “I” was wrong and “he” was right. The teacher decided to teach us a very important lesson.

She brought us up to the front of the class and placed him on one side of her desk and me on the other. In the middle of her desk was a large, round object. I could clearly see that it was black. She asked the boy what colour the object was. “White,” he answered.

I couldn’t believe he said the object was white, when it was obviously black! Another argument started between my classmate and me, this time about the colour of the object.

The teacher told me to go stand where the boy was standing and told him to come stand where I had been. We changed places, and now she asked me what the colour of the object was. I had to answer, “White.”

It was an object with two differently coloured sides, and from his viewpoint it was white. Only from my side it was black.

Life is never just black or white even the symbol of the yin yang has a black dot in the white and a white dot in the black, and not by accident. 

Have a colourful day full of brightness and peace.