A Note on Nuance

The world is more beautiful in full color - but we have to choose to paint it.

Has your perception of a role model ever been violently interrupted by some sudden evidence they are not so good as you thought? It stings. And it almost always leaves us with three very distinct options.

I remember the moment vividly: driving east on I-70 somewhere along the Indiana-Illinois line, I’m on a regular catch-up phone call with a friend when they reluctantly break the news. As it turns out, a mentor I hold in high regard has admitted a deeply troubling truth about something they have done. This mentor had influenced a great deal of my personal growth in that season of my life, and yet, they were the sort of person to mistreat someone incredibly close to them in this very deep way? But, I thought they were upstanding and fair and compassionate and, and, and…. My mind is a wreck. I cannot seem to reconcile the two apparent versions of this person: the one I thought I knew, and the one which seems to be real.

You’ve likely been there, too, in some way: maybe it’s a mentor, or perhaps a friend at school who turns out to be saying things behind your back, or maybe a less personal, yet still impactful, situation where you learn some buried stories about your favorite celebrity who had seemed to be such a good person. How did you react? Did you justify it to keep the old perception you had, or write them off as a terrible person whom you should never speak to, or listen to, again? As difficult as either of those two paths can be, there’s a third option which is even more challenging. We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s turn our focus inward: likely you have been accused of something either 1) you did not do at all, or 2) perhaps you did, but your intent was not in line with the accusation. Whether you said something to (or about) a friend and it was misunderstood and they were deeply hurt, or you didn’t attend someone’s party and they took it as a sign you didn’t care about the friendship, or you shared a quote on social media that someone took out of context and accused you of insensitivity. The list can go on—we’ve all been misunderstood, likely many times. Why does this happen?

It’s been said in many different ways, but we humans have a tendency to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our motives. It even makes some sense: we know our motives without asking; we can only observe others’ actions, not necessarily their motives. Unless they bring up their motives, they remain unseen. This way of living—and judging others—is deeply flawed. As we just remembered, we’ve all been misunderstood at the hand of someone else’s judgment. What a great disservice we do to the world by failing to remember that as soon as someone else takes a wrong step in our own eyes. What if we chose to ask questions before we pronounce judgment? What if others would ask questions when they misunderstand us?

Now, why does this have anything to do with where we started—the discussion on folks who fail to live up to our perfect idea of who they are? Well, what happens as soon as you hear what you don’t want to hear about that person? Our most natural reaction is to either assume their intentions were entirely good so we can justify their behavior, or immediately judge their actions as wrong and thus have no interest in learning their intentions. Both options leave absolutely no room for curiosity, compassion, or a genuine desire to know the truth. And, when we quit seeking to understand others, we narrow the world as we know it.

This, my friend, is where nuance enters the picture—that third option we mentioned earlier. By definition, nuance is “a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound." It’s originally something of an artistic word, with synonyms like “shading,” “gradation,” and “overtone.” In other words, nuance notes there is often something between black and white, light and dark, good and evil. Nuance expands our world; polarization shrinks it. Think about it: why do we prefer photographs and videos in color rather than greyscale? They are more real, yes, but not just because we see life in color. They’re more real because black and white tones shrink the possibilities, but color expands. And, just as the folks behind Technicolor created the first color motion pictures by dying black and white film with color again, I believe our job is to paint our world with vibrant color, no matter how much it costs us.

People, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, have all kinds of nuance. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—a man who, no doubt, saw some of the worst of evils and the most beautiful of good—writes: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” This brings us back to that third option when others take actions we believe to be wrong: rather than justifying (pretending they’re all good) or judging (pretending they’re all bad), we must reconcile in our hearts the truth that each of us are capable of both good and evil. This is incredibly challenging, and I don’t pretend to have mastered it. Yet, I am convinced of this: the world doesn’t get better when we draw lines in the sand and proclaim everyone standing on the other side is the enemy.

This is applicable to far more than simply being disappointed in the actions of our role models. What does this look like in our daily lives? It’s things like avoiding categorizing other folks without asking questions (genuine questions, not judgmental questions) first. It’s choosing not to reduce a complex person with a soul to nothing more than who they voted for. It’s looking for motives behind actions. It’s not mixing up the terms “smart” and “right” or “dumb” and “wrong”. It’s not fighting hate with hate, calling everyone we disagree with an idiot (or worse), or thinking we’ll expand the love in the world by making a post on Instagram about why everyone else is wrong.

Oh, how desperately we each need to open our hearts and minds to the color of the world. It’s painful, as we must acknowledge the evil in the good, but it’s beautiful, as we can see the light even in the darkness. Not one of us has a monopoly on the truth. Each of us have fallen short, each of us have failed to be the love the world needs, and yet each of us has the power to make our small corner of the world just a touch brighter by seeking to understand the people around us.

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Journal Prompt of the Week

What’s the one action you can take over the next week to bring some nuance to your conversations and seek to understand others more?