Absolutely, Nothing
Amy Smilovic of the clothing brand Tibi has this thing with the colour grey (she is American, so she spells it as gray).
It’s both a favourite colour of hers and a life philosophy. The lens through which she navigates life.
But before I get into this, her relationship with grey, let me tell you about how I feel about Amy. She is likely the one person on earth I have never met, with whom, on paper, we have absolutely nothing in common; she is white, older, from a different continent, and raised differently from me, but I feel she is the exact representation (okay, maybe not exact, since I’m here saying nothing is absolute) of all I stand for. My beliefs, the way I think, her ideologies, and her nerdiness.
Each time she writes or opens her mouth, I swear she has read my mind or is speaking the words I would say about that topic or context. So I read her blog and her books and listen to her podcasts. And I’m not sure if there are reinforcements or if it’s becoming some form of osmosis.
Anyways, I have been reading her latest book, Almost Reckless, where she explains why she likes grey. This likeness of grey as a philosophy is the reason for The Grey Area podcast, which members of her team at Tibi host, exists to extend and expand the conversation.
Quotes from Amy from Almost Reckless:
“This is my ethos, it’s how we approach our designs, it’s how I want to live my life. It was that balance of being wildly creative but grounded at the same time—I’m a realist, after all. That balance of being almost reckless. It said exactly what we were: creative people who were tethered to utility and pragmatism. One cannot exist without the other; it’s the dimension we crave and the flat descriptor we reject. Putting words to that in-between, gray state gave me an immediate sense of control”
“ When things are so conveniently black-and-white, they inevitably fall flat because little in our lives is purely black-and-white. Rather, it is gray, my favorite color. Risk and reward, work and life, creativity and pragmatism. It is essential but—at times, I fear—misunderstood. Weaponized, even, to further bifurcate our lives.”
The whole ethos is that life inhabits fully in the grey. Certainty is overrated. The lives we live and the identity we form are all constructed through discernment and ambiguity. She says we should follow the compass, not the GPS.
There is an intellectual laziness to pitching one’s tent in either/ or. There are very few squarely binary things. Almost everything is nuanced and contextual. Believing in absolutes means one hasn’t done the work of looking beneath the surface, especially when dealing with other humans.
Peeling away the layers to understand the complexities behind why people do the things they do. Accepting that 2, 3, or even 4 things or more can exist and be true in the same individual or circumstance.
Amy simply resists binaries. And leans more into spectrums. She would rather stay with the ambiguity that lives in discomfort, discernment, self-interrogation, unfinished thinking, contradiction, risk, discovery of who we are, identity, taste, etc., through curiosity and critical thinking.
For the logical, staying in the grey might mean standing for nothing, being slippery, or paralysis. But no, it means fluidity, having rubrics to filter decisions and weighting them based on your beliefs or maybe goals. It’s understanding that taking a stand doesn’t make it the only truth, but just the truth for you in that particular situation; neither does it negate other people’s perspectives.
This reminds me of the instructor who facilitated the Institute of Directors (IoD) governance class; each time we asked a question regarding different scenarios that might affect board members, her answer was always, “It depends.”
Almost everything is nuanced. The right answer or solution would most likely be different depending on the context.
Keep going,
Ije.