I don't see the world in black and white very often and that can make for a complicated little existence. Sometimes it feels endless. This is why situations like the feeding tube media incident that will remain unnamed make me so mentally tired. And don't get me started on the elections and the "moral values" platform. How can these people know right and wrong for sure? I can see so many elements, so many reasons why and why not for so many things, so many people and feelings and shades of gray.

The exceptions are generally big, like violence against people and animals, which I find reprehensible across the board with the exception of self-defense. I'm pretty definitive about those things...just want to be clear on that.

See, I can't even say I'm gray in black and white!

Anyway, when I do have a hard and fast opinion - a resolute belief that something is absolutely right or has happened precisely the way it was meant to and should have, I pay close attention.

I found out this week that something bad happened to someone who was very cruel to me and two dear friends of mine a year or so ago. Actually, he did something bad, that, in my opinion (and only that, of course) showed the kind of unpleasant, unhappy, sick person he was, and he was apparently punished for it. I am not sorry for him. As soon as I heard about it, I did NOT have the usual twisted conversation with myself: "Oh, wow, that's terrible!" "HA! He got what he deserved." "But does anyone really, really deserve to suffer, regardless of what a schmuck they are?" "YES! BRING IT ON! You're forgetting how ridiculous and abusive he was to you and the people you care about." "You're not being balanced" "I'm being vindicated!" "What about you? You're not perfect. What if you were held karmically accountable for all the shit you pull?" "We're not talking about me!" And so on.

I generally like people, and REALLY like lots of people, so when I thoroughly dislike someone I have to deal with in a long-term situation, it's unusual and upsetting. I usually see it as a challenge - how to figure out how to communicate in a better way, or how to simply coexist peacefully, which is more difficult than it needs to be sometimes. This was someone I couldn't communicate with. This was someone I trained myself, essentially, to ignore, because he made me excessively uncomfortable. I knew he wasn't a nice person, and my intuition (which occasionally works) told me he was trouble. And now that it's been proven out, I'm not gloating at all (because people were hurt because of this latest stunt he pulled, and gloating really isn't my thing when that goes down) but I'm glad that he's been held accountable. I think it's the only way anyone can learn to change, even a little bit - to see that the things they're doing aren't acceptable and will cause them and the people around them to suffer.

This got more complicated than I intended. I'm just really still in shock about it, I think.