Being "In the Brown"

No, not like poop... Get your head out of the sewer.

The world likes to see things as black and white. Binary thinking makes things "simple." It's either this or that - right or wrong...

Right? ... WRONG!

Going to University for Media Studies taught me that nothing is simply binary, even if the media outlets show us this time and time again.

"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists."

HA! What a brutal way to see things.

I am grateful for my teachers for showing me that there are many sides to every story. In some of my classes, my teachers would tell us a topic we have to write about, and THEY would pick the side we had to prove. What a great exercise to expand our thinking, and understanding of the topic/the world. Instead of black and white, they wanted us to think in the grey.

However, there are MANY colours to be mixed together. Not just black and white.

And what do you get when you mix all the colours?

Think back to when you were a kid and mixing paint in art class. You have purple, yellow, green, blue, red, etc. What do you get?

Poopoo brown. I HATED when that happened to my paints.

There's no coming back from that. I do like it when that happens in my brain though.

Because what else is brown? The Earth.

When you think "in the brown," you are grounded.

If you look up, you see the Earth as it is. In its entirety.

Imagine if everyone looked up, before they took a stance from a grounded place. How beautiful would the world be?

So, be in the brown.

The brown is not cute. It's not shiny. It's is not overly loud/bold. However, from it grows flowers of EVERY colour. And THAT is bright, bold, shiny and beautiful. That beauty grows from the dirt... from the brown.

So, get dirty. Roll around in the brown before you take a stance.

I used to think it was a bad thing to see every side of things. I thought I was a "fence-sitter" and too easily influenced when I didn't see things as black or white. Now, I see it as a strength. I can see MORE from the fence and playing in the dirt than I can from being stuck on one side of the wall.

So, let me leave you with a couple thoughts/questions: 1. What are you only seeing as black and white lately? Where could you be more "in the brown"?

2. What "weakness" of yours can actually be seen as a strength?