The Color of the World

I've been doing a lot of writing about some of the events in my life and what they ultimately mean to me. A part of the research into this process has been reading through some of my old journals - and I do mean old, like as in high-school old - just to get a little perspective. One of the things that caught my attention was not in the writing but in the margin, where I had scribbled something that perhaps felt profound at the time but was probably not my own thought. It was simply, "Don't paint the world with your brush."

The reason I kind of got hung up on this one was that I wasn't exactly sure what angle it was coming from, so I had no idea where to take it to. I was taking some basic writing courses then just like every high-school sophomore, so maybe a teacher said that, but why? And whose brush was I supposed to use? I was 14 - I barely had any brushes to call my own. Or was this about just using one color to paint the entire world, that was clearly a multi-colored object? That didn't feel right. Was this about writing voice, because not using your own voice seems intuitively wrong. It was a puzzler.

I think it dawned upon me a litter later on what another possible meaning could be, and this one felt a little more natural, though maybe the painting metaphor was not the most appropriate. A part of me wondered if it was more a statement about trying to not look at the world through your own personal lens. This kind of made sense because, as I said, I wrote that when I was 14, and my field of vision was quite small. Or, rather, I didn't really have much of a brush to work with. I knew very little about the world, even less from first-hand experience, and had little clue about how complex things could be. However, what was that saying about writing? Was it telling me to not write about my own limited experiences? I was confused again.

Eventually, I made a few connections that caused things to click. In high school, those of us who kept writing journals did so because they were assigned to us, and we had to fill three pages a week. We then handed them in, got them back on Monday, and went back to writing. I took a closer look at the entries I had done the weeks prior to that note of mine in the margin. I had been writing about relationships and how I perceived them. (I won't get into details. Let's just say I was 14 and about as ignorant as can be about how relationships really worked). My conclusions had been simple expressions of frustration, like all young teens my age, and I went on from there. That's when I realized what the statement had meant.

I was allowing my experience to be the main determinant of how the world must be. I experienced something, and decided that's how it all worked every time, everywhere. My young mind applied the very limited world I knew and stretched it across the entire globe. That's not exactly fair to the rest of the globe, especially if their success or failure would be determined by my tiny, judgmental ideas.

The big takeaway as a writer is to remember that even though I hold a particular viewpoint, that doesn't mean everyone else does. Plenty of people may hold opposing viewpoints and be just as passionate about them as I am about mine. Assuming that my ways, thoughts, and ideas are the default settings of the world limits my ability to connect to others, to relate to others, and definitely write about other people that gives them individuality and depth as opposed to being little clones of me. Let the world be whatever color it chooses; whatever color works for it.

And if you get a chance, think up a better metaphor than, "Don't paint the world with your own brush," because I think there are better ways to say it.