I can see it. The butterfly just beyond the gate. This gate scares me, and it separates me from the outside world. It seems to be hundreds of feet high, and countless miles wide, but I can see the butterfly it’s only a few feet away flapping its wings; it’s in pain. This side of the gate is all I know. I have only seen the world from this side. I hate that I now feel comfortable perpetuating the same mundane routine that I’ve been pigeonholed into day in and day out, and even though I long to feel the embrace of another I am quickly reminded that, that experience is not for me. Not on this side of the gate. It needs my help, its’s wing is caught on a branch of a dying tree, and if I don’t do something the butterfly will surely perish. Right? I’m not completely certain how life works anymore. The order of operation that my mind subscribes to is black and white, no gray. You’re good, or you’re bad. You live, or you die. This side of the gate has robbed me of the gray. I hear that ALL of life’s gems are found in the gray. Love falls in the black, but the journey to love is through the gray. Evil falls in the white, but the origin story of why goes through the gray. I close my eyes praying that the black and the white that I see will blend together, and for a split second give me a peek at the gray. I’d kill for a glimpse. I am alone on this side of the gate. I wish to free the butterfly because It doesn’t deserve to die in the white or perish in the black. I close my eyes wishing I could extend my little hand and serve every being beyond this gate their hearts desires and shower them with the gray. I care more about them than me. The butterfly doesn’t have long, it’s wings flap slower and slower. It’s in pain. My lonely mind ruminates over every living being in pain and I overdose on guilt and shame. I see that no matter how far I reach through this gate, I’ll never be able to give them the gray. Not from this side of the gate. Fate strikes, and the butterfly is stuck in time. Completely frozen in the black, and utterly fixed in the white. Karma lives in the gray, and the gray operates just beyond the gate.