It Don't Matter if You're Black or White!

One of the main purposes of this blog is to help me overcome my black-and-white attitude.  

For too much of my life, I thought I was avoiding the "appearance of evil," which really meant becoming too bland and uptight and missing out on innocent fun.  There  was a period where I didn't even listen to music (gaaaaaah) because I started getting suspicious of "hidden meanings" behind vague lyrics.   I can't believe now that I went that far and cut out something that is so dear and important to me.  

I cut out music after a comment made by my YW president: She said that she felt much better and more spiritual after listening to almost no secular music and instead listening to hymns.  Instead of thinking, "Well, that may work for her, but I don't think I need that," I thought, "Well, if my YW president is suggesting it, I should do it."  I soon became terribly frustrated after cutting out music and growing so hyper sensitive about the meaning of lyrics (when I started looking for risqué meanings, I found them–even if they weren't there.  If you look for something hard enough, you'll find it, even if it doesn't exist).  I finally broke down and cried when I read an article in the New Era urging youth to trade pop music for church music because it would be uplifting and helpful.  I felt resentful that this magazine was telling me what I was doing was right when it was making me miserable.

I really was trying to do the right thing, but since I am black-and-white and perfectionistic, I usually went completely overboard.  It truly was startling when I finally realized that I didn't have to apply every talk, every lesson, every New Era article to myself; that maybe, I was doing a fine enough job already and didn't need to work on that.  For the longest time, my reaction to every talk really was, "Oh!  I definitely need to work on that!"  I would feel bad for being critical of a talk and chide myself, thinking, "I have to get something out of this!  I'm prideful if I don't think their message is good, and I'm rationalizing my behavior if I think this doesn't apply to me!"  That is so wrong.  So so so wrong.  I think a big reason why I was like that for so long was that I got nothing but praise and positive reactions to that attitude; leaders and other adults in the ward would gush about how sweet and humble I was, and one man even said that I was "floating above and ahead everyone else."  Well, I wasn't happy inside, but it took me awhile to realize that.

Being black-and-white makes you gray, that is, bland and boring.  I do, however, want to be gray in the way that I accept the middle ground instead of an extreme view.  

This subject reminds me of the Michael Jackson song, "Black or White."  And that reminds me of a lovely cover version of the song I heard in a German class.  It began with a bit of the original song, then a German woman (in a thick accent) yelled to her husband to turn that music down.  He replied (in a thick accent), "But I like this funky music!  I like this funky music!"  And then the polka music came in!  The man proceeded to sing the song with an oom pah pah backing in heavily accented English.  I can still hear him saying, "If youah sinking 'bout my baby it don't mattah if youah black or white!"