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Remember the Apple commercial from the 80’s (video) where there were rows and rows of people dressed in gray, living in gray, with grayed dull thoughts (or rather the lack of thoughts)? I think sometimes that is how we get in our lives, getting up each day, trying to move through each hour and process what we need to do and say. I think our emotions get gray too. And pretty soon, all we can see in our lives and dreams are fields and fields of gray.
We begin to feel that all there is to life is another day of gray, that the only way to act and react is gray, that there is no other way to do, live be. We can lose our dreams. We can lose our desire for better, we can lose our joy. And we can lose the belief that we can have different.
Scientific studies have shown that diversity, different perspectives, different, is what helps our minds to grow, function, thrive (article). Nursing homes have discovered this, that as people sit in the same building, seeing the same people – for the most part in the same age range and background, doing the same thing every day, they lose their brightness. The light begins to go out and they lose their ability to think. That is why the focus on activities to bring new thoughts, new actions, new direction, new perspective to their lives.
Knowing that a new perspective can mean the difference between feeling locked into gray-on-gray-on-gray, break yourself out of the Black hole of grayness. It is the easy, mesmerizing draw of sameness, grayness that lulls us into the gray numb.
But it is worth it to break into the sunshine and the full spectrum of colors. Do something non-gray today, bring some life back to your life. It doesn’t even have to be a big project or hard, just different.
In fact, yesterday, I got to do something not gray, when I went to coffee with a dear friend I had not seen for a very long time. Life had popped up and grown over all of the contacts we had, till we hadn’t contacted each other.
It was so refreshing to spend time with someone I respect and care about, who is in a different and similar place in their life. To hear someone else’s take on the world, another perspective; a little red and yellow and blue and green in my life, pushing out some of the blinding gray. It sparked some life, some creativity, some fun, some new perspective!
So I dedicate today’s column to my sparkling, refreshing friend, who probably doesn’t even know he resembles ginger ale. 🙂 This one’s for you CS!
In one word, what’s one small thing you could do to bring color to your life today? Please share your thoughts in the comments on the Facebook page – Click Here.