I’m sure this idea has been brought up and talked about a few times in history, probably more than that, but I wanted to make a post about it from my perspective.
Since I was young, my grandmother would always tell me that when things are bad there is good right around the corner; vice versa.
There’s a lot of talk about the “good” and the “bad” of life. If your more logical thinker, the “positives” and the “negatives” of life. Now, not many people seem to care about the grays of life—when most of us are living it right now.
In my post, the Image of Man, I explained how the gray areas are the most important part of our lives. Not the “good” or the “bad” but what gets us to those points? Theres nothing out there I’ve read that really drills this analogy home how I’ve thought of it. So here goes nothing…
The zebra analogy is as ‘simple’ as this:
as we all (hopefully) know, a zebra has a combination of both black and white stripes, a unique pattern passed down from zebra to zebra but never staying the exact same. Each pattern a zebra is born with is never the same and neither are we.
The pattern on the zebra is a black with white stripes, or is it white with black stripes? We forget there is a grayscale to everything and to me it represents the positive and negative parts we go through in our lives. Many cultures the zebra itself is a symbol of a peaceful and balanced life, for others it’s quite the opposite. Some people don’t even think zebras are real. Everything is just a happening, as Alan Watts would say.
For a long time we’ve associated white with being positive and black with being negative (racism ring any bells??)… The zebra analogy can be used to help cope with our daily lives. Reminding us that our life is a unique, full of positive and the negative happenings, patches of gray to get there. Nothing is permanent. And nothing is only “black” or only “white” because the gray area does exist, even if it’s barely visible.
“We are afraid of what we cannot see and what we cannot comprehend.”
emriyus 2022
With younger generations becoming glued to technology and material items to cope, they are becoming less aware of the reality we face as human beings. The divide amongst youth and adults is growing, as each town starts to border each together.
That said, I usually end my posts with some kind of rhetorical question to get people thinking about existentialism, but is it too much? Is there such thing as “too much?” We’re all the judge here.
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