My hair is the color of black cherry soda. The sky and the water, a few nights ago, were stripey colors of orange, and pink, and blue sherbet. Daily, I drink green juice, eat green salad, and walk on green grass, barefoot.
The colors of summer are revealing themselves in outstanding ways.
People have been revealing their true colors to me, too. Ever since I embarked on this adventure of leaving the day-to-day of a corporate job, going on a health retreat, and announcing the reboot of my life, you have come out of the woodwork to speak, share, learn, and vent and I love hearing your stories. You are revealing yourselves in outstanding ways, too.
I find we are funny about our social habits. It takes one person – in this case, me – to admit that things are in a shift or are stressful or need to change before people feel comfortable opening up. Would I, otherwise, have ever heard about the niece of a former co-worker who was sick for years, then went to England, ate cleanly, and cured her food allergies? Would I have been told about so many of you who want to make a life change, but don’t feel that the moment is right, right now? Would I have learned about the writings of Shafin de Zane? I don’t think so.
So many of us spend too much of our time together speaking about practical (in my mind, boring) things like our jobs, or the state of our lawns, or the score of the baseball game… in the words of Chris Rock (and I’m paraphrasing) “I bring along a single, crack-head to dinner parties, just to keep it interesting.” It seems to me that it takes someone – crazy, honest, or both – to reveal the cracks in his/her life before people will open up and share the important stories in their own lives. Why is this so? Are people so afraid to be branded or labeled as silly or weird or TMI (revealing too much information) that they keep things generic? Probably. I need to remember that many folks have Puritan roots, and they fear revealing their colorful ones. (Why we place labels on one-another and cause this sense of fear is a different topic for another day.)
Next time you meet someone for the first time, instead of asking the over-used question “SO, what do you DO?” why not ask something like “Who inspires you?” or “What is your story?”
Ultimately, if I were Queen of the World (which I often wish) I would decree all of you to be open about those things in your life which may be interesting, educational, enlightening, and even inspirational. I am Queen of this Blog, so I encourage you to do the same. After all, if you can share your true colors with me, you can and should share them with others, too.
