Shades of Grey

I enjoy reading! Often times I will pick up ‘mindless’ books just for entertainment. Some of my go-to authors are Vince Flynn, Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson. I know it will be a suspense-filled, page turning read that will take me about a round-trip flight time to finish.
But every once in a while I come across a book that is REALLY worth reading! The kind of book that makes you think, inspires you to action, or at least deeply reflect on your own life.

The Help is one such book that I just finished reading. While I am sure just about everyone out there has read it (I waited a week on the waiting list at the library and they have 23 copies just in Carmel) and it is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, I STILL wasn’t prepared by how touching it was going to be.

There are so many incredible powerful and ageless themes packed into 530 pages. Some of the smaller themes I just can stop thinking about:

How would I have viewed segregation if I were living in the 50’s and 60’s when it was common
place? What ‘norms’ have I just accepted because society says so?

What voice is loudest in my child’s ears, mine or the world? How do I make mine louder?

You are who your friends are, or are you? When is it time to cut a friend loose?

How far would you go to fit in? Is being accepted that important? When is it just not worth it anymore?

Do people ever really change? Can people change? Relationships change, is that because people change or circumstances change or both?

How far would you go to help a friend? How far would you go to help a stranger?

The most powerful line to me in the whole book wasn’t the catch phrase I hear so often associated with this title, “You is smart, you is kind, you is important” (although I did tear up reading that line). The most powerful line for me was on page 492.

“There is so much you don’t know about a person. I wonder if I could’ve made her days a little bit easier, if I’d tried. If I’d treated her a little nicer. Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

The irony of this epiphany is that given the nature of the book, you would think this was spoken by a white woman to a black woman, and yet it was spoken from one white woman about another.
After reading this book, it becomes clearer to me that people, circumstances, rules, laws, and life aren’t usually blank and white; everything is mostly shades of grey.