Yes! The color for today is brown. I know. Brown. Blah. Right? But wait. Brown is a very nuanced color and not straightforward at all. When I was in art school, earning my art degree, some of the lessons I learned early on were mind-blowing and life changing and have stuck with me ever since. For example, do you know how you arrive at brown? Take any color and add its compliment. Eventually, if you add enough, say, orange to blue, you’re gonna get brown. I think my favorite brown comes from mixing red and green. If mixed in right proportions, you never really lose the red. That’s my favorite brand of brown.
In this way, brown offers us new perspective, and as I set out on my 10K run today, I set out for a new perspective. Coach Bennett reminded me today that perspective is everything (he didn’t say that in so many words, but that was the effect his words had on me as I hit it hard on a warm, breezy day).
There are so many different ways that one can arrive at brown. There are so many different ways to interpret any number of things. Brown is as diverse as our human experience. As I was running and contemplating the color brown, a memory flooded my conscience. When I was studying painting, I had many fellow painting students that probably taught me more than I realized at the time. I remember my co-student and I were having a conversation and he told me that he didn’t see brown. His paintings were incredibly vibrant, infused with saturated reds and yellows and purples and greens. When he said he didn’t see brown, do you know the first immediate way that I took it in was with shame? I did see brown. I see a lot of brown. The thoughts that went through my mind were full of self-doubt and questioning. I thought perhaps I was in the wrong place. Maybe artists don’t see drab colors like brown. Maybe I don’t belong here. I wasn’t even aware that those thoughts were the first thoughts to run through my mind until my run today. They were fleeting thoughts that I talked myself down from, if even unconsciously. As I revisited that interaction today, I became aware of how beautiful and diversified each artistic, creative, voice is. And we need every one of those voices, because they each offer a different perspective, a different human experience. I love that my friend Tom doesn’t see brown; he taught me so much about color, such as introducing my to my favorite yellow. And, I see brown. I see it everywhere. Sometimes I can tell what colors predominantly made the brown that I see, especially when it’s a red/green combo. If I’m painting, I can add a compliment of that brown right next to it to make a contrast that pops. That is my perspective. Brown reminds me that we always have a particular perspective, and we always can reevaluate and see what we want to hold on to and what we can let go of that no longer serves us or the people we love. I’m talking about running. I’m talking about a creative life and I’m just talking about life. Where is there a space in your life that could use a fresh perspective? Where are you seeing brown when there might be a gift you are overlooking within the brown? How is your perspective limiting your capacity for compassion? For yourself? For others?