Yellow

Chapter 3

"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones."

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Today I decided that I was going to write about selfishness, not just as a personal thing, but as a general everybody has it kind of thing. Then I changed my mind. I sat here thinking about the best way to properly convey my thoughts on this matter, you know, my wise, deeply insightful thoughts and then I realized that my thoughts are neither wise nor deeply insightful, just mine. Over the years we train ourselves to think and behave in a specific way quite often unbeknownst to us. If you knew that every time someone told you that the yellow colour of your shirt was ugly, that your mind built a wall against not only that colour but to the opinion of others, would you go willingly with it? What if yellow was your favourite colour and all your life you loved it very much, would you throw it away? In the beginning it may be a very small wall, really just the height and width of the colour so at first that is all you are blocking, but the next time you get around to thinking about it the wall has expanded to the farthest reaches of your mind. Now every time you see the colour yellow you feel a sense of shame and guilt, every time someone makes a joke about that colour you feel embarrassed. Even as you move forward, you don't see the wall being built brick by brick in every area and aspect of your life. It trails behind you as you build your own Great Wall based on the opinion of the kids in Mrs. Ungers grade one class. How much of what you like is truly what you like and how much of what you don't is really you?

It's so strange to think that we block out so many things, a miracle could be staring us in the face but it's yellow so we can't see it.

Me xo