Life and death, love and loss, black and white… examples of opposite words right, they contradict each other. Yet there comes a point when we realize these words are not opposed to each, they exist because of the other and one leads to the other.

We live and eventually we die. With each life breath, we move a step closer to death. In fact, the only thing that we know for sure is one day we will die. All our other plans change, go awry or just we change our minds. While we are aware of death we avoid consciously ruminating about death and that’s how it should be. The impending death should not stop us from living, it should not cast a shadow on our lives. We live our life to the fullest because one day we shall die.

Of course, there comes a time in our life when we lose someone we love to death. We try to fight death, try to snatch back our loved ones, but eventually, death wins living a hollow in our lives or a harsh reminder that our time too shall come. No matter how menacing death may be, life eventually wins. For our loved ones live within us forever, we can feel them looking over us. I am sure they become our guardian angels.

We live, we love and with love comes loss. We lose the ones we love so dearly because they fall out of love or their feelings diminish. We are faced with a feeling of hollowness again that can be worse than the loss caused by death. It takes us a while to grapple and come to terms with the fact that our love may not be enough. We try to fight loss, we beg, we plead, and we go on loving. There’s bitterness and there’s pain for letting go is not easy. Eventually, we do let go and for a while tell our hearts not to love again.

But thankfully the errant heart has her way and falls in love again. Love will bring along pain, we may lose again, either death will intervene or time. But what is life if denied love? We love madly, passionately, knowing full well that we may hurt again for there’s so little time to live and love.

Black and white, these colours do hand in hand too. Black results from the absence or complete absorption of light, hence usually associated with everything bad and evil. White, on the other hand, reflects light, hence pure. But we etch our lives with black ink on white paper, one couldn’t exist without the other.

After a while we realize life is not black and white, the colours merge to give us the many intriguing hues of grey and life is so much more exciting because of the many shades of grey!