Living in full colour
As I sneeze my way through my day this phrase popped into my head and I began to wonder what it meant. What does it mean to live in full colour? I've had periods of my life that felt like wading through grey sludge and it felt like the colours had been turned off. Like on a TV. I'd love to hear what other people think of as 'living in full colour'. Part of me thinks its a ability to live outside the parameters as what everyone else thinks as 'normal'. If you want to eat chocolate cake for dinner do so. If you want to lie on the sofa and read a novel the entire day - do so. If you want to hand knit a baby blanket at 4 times the cost of buying something new then do so. If you want to wear purple wellingtons to private views, care for 25 cats (each with a basket lined with cashmere cardigans from charity shops), have a supply of funky hats for vistors for tea in the garden, keep up a voluminous correspondence, and collect teapots then do so. If you want to commandeer students to drive you to the countryside to collect clay from fields do so. If you husband dies and he's always refused to let you live with your children 5000 miles away get yourself on a plane three weeks later and fly there. If you want to cycle across the widest part of Scotland because its there, do it. Hell if you'd like to cycle around the the coast of Australia do it. Do a degree in English at Cambridge and realise you'd rather be an artist? Take an inheritance and go to Edinburgh Art College and flunk being a teacher in a school (you would have hated refereeing Lacrosse games). If you realise that doing a degree in law is a short walk to being a solictor in a no horse town take you skills and become a film producer.*
'Living in full colour' to my mind is not just about adding a bright ribbon to your life but remaking it the way you want it.
I've love to know what you think.
*
Me
Hendrix-Cat's Mother
Kaytee Horseman Head of Ceramics Department Edinburgh College of Art
My Grandmother
My Brother
My Cousin
My Mother
Rebecca Knapp
3 comments:
I'm finding it difficult to define in words, living outside the parameters of what is normal (or shedding the restrictive expectations of others) is very important for our happiness (and sanity!), but for me "living in full colour" also equates to a feeling - the sense of being absolutely, perfectly and joyously "here-in-the-present". It's like summer rain, or watching snow or the first spring breeze you feel on your skin. It's a feeling of lightness, invincibility, serenity, joy - a cleansing flash.
ahh yes the here in the present - when now feels just right - so much of the time my squirrel brain is rushing back and forth from past to future and when it stops in the present its so wonderful. It does have a bearing as so many people who live in full colour stop the past from holding them back and the future from holding them back. By the future holding them back I mean the endless reiteration of 'is this a good thing to do' and 'what will people think'.
exactly!
trade being a squirrel for being a goldfish (without the repetition!)
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