Purple Grass and Orange Skies~

Remember in kindergarten, when you could color the grass purple and paint the skies orange?  You could put six inch eyelashes on mom's beautiful turquoise eyes and draw red whiskers on dad's chinny chin chin.  Kittens were always girls and puppies were always boys.  Life was yours to embrace, enjoy, evaluate! How joyful was your ability to create the pictures in your mind...

Then along came 1st grade.  Grass had to be green. That is what the teacher said. Kids began to laugh if your pictures were different.  By the 5th grade, everyone's pictures looked alike, and you learned about conformity, acceptance, and status quo, but your imagination became stagnant, colors became bland and school became a requirement.

It wasn't just in art that constraints and restraints ended childhood dreams.  Music had to suddenly make sense, stay on pitch, and match a specific beat.  Compositions had to have perfect punctuation, specific capitalization, and subject verb agreement.  Poetry had to be read in rhythm and rhyming patterns had to be identified.  Words were no longer beautiful, but served a purpose dictated by rules.

Funny thing, though.  The writer with perfect mechanics becomes an editor while an author rediscovers life through stories.  The pianist with perfect rhythm and pitch becomes a piano teacher, while the one who hears music in the wind becomes a composer.  The exact paint strokes and color matching develops a house painter, but creating a colorful palette and using whimsical subjects develops a modern day Picasso or Van Gogh.

Whether you are a parent or a young adult, a bachelor or a grandparent, open the windows and smell the softness of a sunset, the melody of a songbird, and the poetry in a river.  Return to those days of purple grass and orange skies, and for Heaven's sake, allow the children in your life to find the joy in creativity and the rewards of uniqueness. Life is a joyful journey if we truly learn to be ourselves.