Sickness, Life, TLA's, Dichotomy, Death and Taxes

I just extended the list of Inevitable Things in the world. It's not just Death and Taxes.

HMRC suck, and not in the good way. I registered as self-employed and part of the CIS at the beginning of October, damnit, and they still haven't sent me my (apparently all-important) personal magic number. Which, long story short, means that because they won't give it out over the phone, I can't give it to my employer until next month (if I'm lucky and they get their act together). Therefore I get charged extra tax on my paycheque in the interim, so the Taxman gets over a grand from my wages this month. Not impressed. Sure, I'll get it back at the end of the year, but that's beside the point. I have bills to pay now.

Hmph. Not to mention all the blasted acronyms. I'm fairly certain they deliberately reuse the same letters, just to ensure you lose track of things and get confused. HMRC, HSE, CIS, SIC, CSCS, FFS...arrrrgh!

My brain is half-way functioning for the first time in four days, courtesy of the flu. It has not been a good week. And I have been pondering our penchant for dichotomy; our habit, as humans, to want to put everything into little boxes, classified into two opposing groups. Black or white, alive or dead, right or wrong, good or evil, male or female, gay or straight, easy or difficult....

So simple, so rigid, so restrictive and so wrong. Why do people (myself included) tend to define what is around them using a choice of two mutually exclusive labels?

One major difference between man and God? In my opinion, God probably knows it's a foolish practice to judge in this way; can see that what is right is also wrong; someone can be dead whilst alive; neither male nor female.

Here's to the infinite tones and shades that lie between black and white, and our persistent ability to ignore them at will.