Are you full of lights, darks or both?
Do you view life through multi-colored lenses not only visually, but mentally?
What does your mind experience by looking at the image below?
What does your mind experience by looking at the image below?
Shades of gray going from black to white and white to black with shades of gray.
To choose to see life as a world that contains vibrant colors, black, white or shades of gray is challenging for many human beings. Is it a choice plus a taught belief system or both?
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Analyzing my life from the beginning...
I remember a magical childhood full of wonder and awe for existence; full of colors with shades of gray.
I was born in October 1974 in a small town in Iowa of only about 22,000 inhabitants. Although the majority of the town was White, I had a neighbor friend from a Korean mother and White father and I also had a great friend with Mexican-American parents. For me is not to focus on the melatonin in someone's skin to bring this up, but to emphasize the the cultural diversity I was exposed despite of being in Iowa in the 70s. I still remember the hanging beads in my friend's house with the mother from Korea. Her cooking permeated the house plus her decorating style was unlike my own mother's way of putting together a room.
So the contrast was apparent to me and I was curiously interested. You can even go as far as saying fascinated. My mom also decorated at our house and I used to love to watch my mom & her best friend, who was gay, make a room go from frumpy to fabulous. Yea-Yeah!
The background setting and upbringing I had was super cool the more that I self-reflect. I really loved my youth doing the following activities;
Riding Big Wheels, playing at the park down the street, playing carnival games that my brother ran, playing basketball in the driveway on the hoop attached to our deck, making snow figures & igloos, going to our cottage, loving and playing with our dogs, bunnies & cats, going canoeing, going boating, riding my bike, walking along the railroad tracks, playing arcade games at the arcade, relaxing outside freely on a summer night, having crushes on girls, just hanging out with friends, having to go home when the street light came on, spending the night at friends houses or having them spend the night at my place, prank calls, playing whiffleball in the backyard, having a garden full of green beans, tomatoes & more, playing in the dump ( a ravine area behind my house), playing volleyball, swimming, having a paper route, being woken up and dragged to go the church (man, would I have rather slept in on Sundays), listening to cassettes and vinyls, watching Saturday morning cartoons, Friday Night Videos ( a show to play music videos ), going to my rich friends house to play with rich people stuff and toys, play Frogger, Pitfall & Grand Prix and more on the Atari 2600, taking piano lessons, making lemonade (YUM), playing with bubble, watching old 8-mm movies (w/o sound) projected onto the white oven's surface, going trick or treating and then my brother and I would use a Key Car ( a play car that would shoot out with a key it came with ) to win the candy since we would consolidate it, playing with my friends, hanging out with my big brother, going to my first concert, Huey Lewis and The News with my family, rolling skating at Skateland, listening to songs like "Do You Believe In Love" by Huey Lewis & The News, faintly remembering my uncle, seeing my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandfather & my dear grandmother on Thanksgiving, listening to Van Halen, Chicago & The Cars, playing with number & letter magnets on the oven, visiting my cousins in Chicago, going to Adventureland (Iowa's amusement par), having water fights, watching hot air balloons float above me, playing along the Mississippi River, going to Great River Days, camping, playing music, looking at Xmas light with my family as a tradition, walking places, doing chores, buying candy with the money from chores, moving my grandma's lawn, opening presents for Xmas and thinking it was the most magical day ever, going to a summer camp in the beautify of nature and so much more.
I am amazed at how wonderful and enjoyable growing up was for me. This leads me to appreciate how my parents and surroundings taught me to see the world in colors with shades of gray. What I mean is that I lived freely without many fears or worries. I was not taught to hate, fear or look down upon others and I know that this attributed to me being a happy go-lucky kid. You know, the whole nature and nurture of life.
To this day, I get upset by seeing or knowing about an inequity or injustice happening. It is second nature for me to take a stand for human beings and respectfully treat everyone as such. This also applies to all species.
I will share with you a time in my life when I have been the most upset about racism. I was 20 years old attending a community college when I saw 2 black kids and 2 white students yelling back at each other almost brewing up a fight. I heard racial epithets being yelled and eventually they drove off. It was clearly a racially charge confrontation.
After seeing and listening to this it was very upsetting and when I went inside to see my teacher, I was an emotional wreck. I was upset that people would basically waste their life using their energy to intentionally hurt others and want to cause harm to another person based on skin color. It was simply just very hard for me to process to see it up close especially and it still a disconnect concept for me to grasp. I guess that I have "hippie blood" in my veins for being full of love, kindness, self-expression, laughter and desire harmony in the Universe. You know, the stuff that people sometime want to stomp out and scoff at.
In my point of view, it was instinctual for me to see life full of metaphorical and actual colors with shades of gray to detect with my eyes or mind. What also really helped was that luckily there was no belief system that taught me to see life in only black or white. To view others as "not like us".
How wonderful that I had my eyes and heart open to experience life to the fullest and for that I have all of the gratitude in the world for my family and community.
Thank you everyone for giving me so much. I love you. :)
Peace, fun and a celebration for life.
Color Me Gray!!!
http://www.dj-egypt.com/mazzika
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