Lessons of childhood we’d learned, that we don’t quite understand the meanings of, until, we’re, much, much, much, older! Translated…
There was a lesson of coloring: normally, we had to, connect the dots, based off of the numbers, to get the full picture of a rabbit, or a tiger, then, we’d, had to, color the animals and the flowers and the grasses beside it.
I’d felt, that coloring was something difficult, I’d, always, colored, outside the boundaries when I wasn’t, paying enough attention as I went back and forth with my coloring markers or crayons.
leaving the blanks like this???
Later on, I’d found a method: colored along the borders first, then, increase the thickness of those lines, then, coloring the insides, then, it’d, greatly, reduced my coloring outside the lines.
And so, that was, how my world got, set up: everything in its, full colors, perfect shapes; sharpened or round; green or, blue.
Until I’d, bumped into, white.
From before, the paper I drew on are all white, blank sheets I must, fill in with the assortments of, colors.
The teacher will pull out the work that weren’t fully colored in, and reminded us, “look around, how can there be white? All of these desk, classrooms, skies, and the sunshine, they all have, colors.”
But, as I’d, first time seen, a great amount of white on the watercolor works; the whites of the larger plates at the place settings at the supper table; even in the poetry, the music, there were, the interjections of silence, I’d, come to understand, that leaving it blank is just right where they’d, happened…………and, those faults that weren’t, filled in with the colors, they’d, awed me so.
I’d once thought, it was too hard, coloring in, but, as I’d, wanted to, reduce the denseness of the colors, to empty some spaces on the sheets, to relax them a bit, to allow them to breathe on their own, to live on, their own, I couldn’t.
At this moment, it’d, finally dawned on me, that the hardest part is not coloring in the colors, but, leaving the blanks.
And so, this, is a lesson that this man learned as an adult, which was, contradictory to what he’d been, taught, to socialized to do, leaving things blank. Life is like that too, sometimes, we feel compelled, to cramp up our schedules, to make our lives more meaningful, not realizing, that meaning can also be find, in the moments when there’s, nothing to do, when we just, stare at the wall, into space, letting our minds, drift away…