Thoughts of Paint and Ghandi
I'm going to paint my upstairs guest bedroom. It's a room that currently collects silence and dust bunnies in equal measure. I can't say that I really need to paint the room. Whole weeks can go by without me going upstairs. I forget it's there sometimes. And yet, the fact that the walls are currently a 1980s shade of seafoam green stirs within me an urge to put my mark on that otherwise unused space.
I've settled on red. Or at least, red on a wall or two and the rest a pleasant beige. I've started looking through magazines and catalogues for inspiration. Complementary colors, themes, ideas. A room I never use is suddenly the most important room in my house. The focus of my thoughts.
Now that I've decided I am going to transform that space, I've starting thinking of people I can invite to come and stay with me. I've begun hoping for out of town guests. My father's annual spring 10 day visit is suddenly all the more thrilling knowing he will stay in my newly stylish room.
It got me thinking about the movie Field of Dreams and the whole "if you build it they will come" creepy, whispering admonishment Kevin Costner hears over and over. Do we react to life or does life react to us?
Do we have to change ourselves, our world, our existence before other people react positvely to us, or do we change in reaction to the positive or negative feedback given to us by others?
As the daughter of a psychologist, I know the difference between being proactive and reactive. And therapists love proactive people. And proactive people paint rooms red without worrying about whether or not anyone will ever see it. Reactive people wait to paint the room red until they know someone needs a place to stay. A proactive person is happy without the input of others, a reactive person needs a road map to find happiness.
The question, then, is an individual one. And maybe is should we react to life or should life react to us? I would propose the latter. A thinker far less cheesy than Kevin Costner said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." And I wish my world red. This weekend it will be so.
posted by Angela @ 5:21 PM
5 Comments:
My vote is for a wedgewood red.
Well, I'm thinking "velvet red" from the Martha color collection at Sherwin/Williams. It's surprisingly hard to choose a good red without a lot of pink or orange in it. Beige is another hard one. It took me several months to find the right shade. No grey, no green, no yellow. Try it sometime, it's difficult. But wedgewood red, eh? I'll give it a whirl.
I confess, I actually don't know if there is a wedgewood red, but I really like wedgewood blue.
Isn't it interesting that when things become important to us (i.e. obsessions), we feel the need to create a performative circle around them. For example, when you start painting the room, you start wanting people to stay there. Or when I start cooking, I want people around to eat it besides myself.
Anyway, I don't think there are many cases in which we are truly "proactive" it's like Creativity (note the capital letter). There are plenty of times we reinvent the same thing with a different twist, but rarely do we come up with something that's not derivitive. With proactivity, we are still responding to stimuli. Ugly walls are your stimuli. You are just responding to them before they become a crisis situation (I'm having a hard time imagining that crisis). Proactive may be a misnomer for "organized" or "prepared."
Okay, Mr. Literal. You've obviously never been to therapy. I think the "proactive" that therapists speak of is different than the dictionary definition of the word. Proactive in terms of taking matters into your own hands and doing something before it passes you by. Doing instead of complaining. Doing instead of stewing in your own juices. Proactive people confront gently a friend who is offending before yelling or hostility become a problem. Yada yada yada. Go surround yourself with therapists and speak the "proactive" language and they will salivate.
Post a Comment
<< Home