Living The Colorful Life
Inside my Kate Spade iPad cover is the statement "live colorfully."
Live colorfully.
I like the idea but what does it mean? If it means wear more color — been there, done that, bought the wrong t-shirt. When will I ever learn that certain shades of yellow look awful...I mean REALLY awful on me.
Live colorfully.
When I was in first grade, they came out with the extra large boxes of limited edition crayons. These weren't your typical red, blue, and green crayons. They were colors like Raspberry Sherbet, Lemon-Lime, Truly Turquoise, and Lighting Hot Pink. Did you have those?
Oh the envy!
I just had to have one of those boxes! How — how, I ask you — was I supposed to color pictures of my family without a Sahara Suntan Taupe? Did my mom really expect me to draw yellow people and hang it on the fridge for the other kids in the neighborhood to see?? No thank you.
It was taupe people or NO people. I was adamant.
The highlight of my first grade year was when one of the boys in my class gave me the last of his Lighting Hot Pink crayon.
It was love at first color.
My pictures never looked the same after that. Hearts, flowers, bunnies--they took on a whole new life. No picture had ever been as pretty as those. Our fridge was overflowing. Open the doors and bring in the neighborhood!
Live colorfully.
What if we allowed things in our life to bring us as much joy as that hot pink crayon?
What if we decided to add more color into our everyday routines?
Instead of passing by the fall leaves, we stopped to dance in them for a few minutes! Instead of just throwing food on the table, we threw open the windows, put on some fun music, and tried our hand at a new recipe.
We decided not to go home and just veg in front of the tv but meet up with some friends to play tennis, start a new project, or take a bike ride in the fall air. Instead of throwing our hair into a messy bun and putting on that "old reliable" sweatshirt to go out, we rocked that messy bun with a big comfy sweater, a beautiful scarf and a fun new color of lipstick?
My kindergarten drawings were really no different when I started using that hot pink crayon. Same triangle looking hearts, same crooked flowers, same deformed bunnies. But adding that color made me enjoy creating them so much more. It made it a little more special. It made the mundane beautiful.
What if we lived colorfully, made the most of every day, every opportunity? What if we didn't live mundane boring lives, but colorful ones instead?
Maybe our days — if not our fridges — would be a picture worth noticing, overflowing with the joy of living a full life. Life is what you make it. I challenge you to give it a try this week.
Where can you add some lightning hot pink to your life? What can you do today to live colorfully?