Interpreting Crayons

My daughter was coloring the other day, her art set and scrap paper scattered on the floor. I was sitting nearby, filing papers at my desk while she talked to herself and occasionally to me, about what she was doing. 

Suddenly the paper-moving stopped, and a small hand appeared on my arm. “Mommy, fix this for me?” She waved a pink crayon at me. 

“What happened?”

“It not working.” She looked confused about why the pink was not being pink. 

I knelt down near the paper and scribbled. It came out black. Quick inspection showed that the crayon tip had a thick black streak of crayon on it, blocking the pink. I scraped it off with my fingernail, and colored it pink to show her. 

“See? It works now.”

She sat down next to me and told me it was my turn to color, so we colored together for a while. I noticed when I had the paper by itself on the art mat, I couldn’t really get a strong color out of it. I added a stack of extra paper underneath and it was much better, and we finished her drawing together. 

Now, I love symbolism. I’m all about interpreting things (hello art education and English literature) as well as finding life lessons in the little things. So my mind just jumped to this crayon and coloring incident and what it had taught me. Sometimes our meditations and life lessons come in unexpected ways.

First, we are like the crayon — we have our true self, our true color. Sometimes we will go though a tough situation, something that brings darkness into our hearts or minds, and we feel like nothing is working because when we “color,” it comes out as darkness or negativity, or something that is not really us. But, that doesn’t mean our essence has changed! All we need is something to scrape that darkness away. We cannot scrape with something soft — if I had used a tissue, that dark smear would still be there. But with a little bit of strength on the other side offering resistance, the dark is removed and we are back to coloring our true color again.

The second thing — when the crayon did its job (coloring), at first it was not very effective — line was crooked, color was weak. But when we added extra paper (or a hard surface) underneath, it worked great. So with us, when we add some support to our situation, some backup, we can color so much better. That support can be anything that helps us — encouragement, people in your corner, meditation, affirmations, seeking joy, self-care, etc. We don’t have to do it alone. 

The only difference is that when we are the crayon, we are the ones who have to do the work of removing/transforming our negativity, not expecting it to begin with an external force. Our change comes from within, so we have to love ourselves enough to be our own negativity-removing power, or at least start on the path. Add some support, and that gives us the impetus to keep moving forward. 

Keep coloring, friends.