All’s fair in love and war.
When I was younger, that never sat well with me. It was too glib, too neat. It seemed to give people license to wrong one another and left those of us who couldn’t wheel and deal at a distinct disadvantage. I could not imagine a scenario where throwing someone over for someone with more appeal could ever be rationalised as the sort of decision made by good people. I was of the mind that you could not be good people if you just took what you wanted without thought for the consequences of your actions on all the other poor saps involved. It was a black and white world. You know the type, a nice and comfortable world where right is right and wrong is wrong. The sort of world we teach our children about and fully encourage to value over all else.
And now, nearly ten years on, I find it’s all going gray. And I’m not just referring to the odd strand here or there, but to the so many shades of gray in all things important. Friends fall in love, fall out of love, parents love and lose just as easily and while no one has actually said, ‘all’s fair in love and war,’ it’s what I keep coming back to. The phrase I once rejected has come back with a sort of languid vengeance, spreading through our ranks.
And it’s not pretty. But, what is most disturbing is not that it’s back and it’s very real, but that I can’t even seem to work up a sense of outrage about it and neither can anyone else. Does this mean I believe that all’s fair in love and war? Did this happen without me even making a conscious decision to run with it? Maybe all my appalled outrage when I was younger was a symptom of denial—a denial of something that I subconsciously knew deep down was true.
I mean, what do we know about love? We know that love conquers all, that love will lead us, that love is worth dying for, that love is all we need. The world, ultimately, being Darwin’s world, would have us believe that love is survival of the fittest. And so it is. It’s not a death match, but it is an arena that doesn’t allow for spectators. You cannot sit this one out and let someone else have the glory because there is only one game. You have to push through your conscience and do what brings you peace and happiness. And I suppose, you just hope that when the smoke clears, people still love you.
Why on earth do we teach our kids this anyway? It took this kid 31 years to figure out that it’s not at all black and white, and that good people need to live their lives too. But I guess, there’s another shade of gray for you. You simply cannot tell a child it’s complicated. I know. I would have scoffed at that!
