The rainbow is made of different colours. It’s early morning and Yellow wakes up, walks down the road and sees Red, jumps and laughs out loud: you are so red! Red is taken by surprise and feeling judged, gets even redder. He looks up at Yellow and defensively says “there’s nothing wrong with me” but deep down feels embarrassed and self-conscious. But then all his family is red, different shades and that what seems normal to him. So he works up all the courage he can find and awkwardly replays: “I am from a red family and everyone is ginger!”
Still discussing the matter, they keep walking when they see Green. Yellow and Red laugh and say “look at that weirdo, he’s so green ahah!”. Green, feeling judged, gets all angry and a deeper green appears in his cheeks. “Leave me alone! What’s wrong with you people!?”
Surely someone must be right here, shouldn’t everyone be green? Or yellow? It makes so much sense! But then there seems to be a multitude of colours. Wouldn’t it be better if everyone was normal, Red thinks, like his family?
And suddenly Green has a moment of realisation and remembers his grandpa telling the story of Light, an old lady he heard lived down the road. They search for her house thinking she might be red, or yellow, or green? But when she opens the door in her powerful white, shining colour, they don’t know what to make of it. Her candid, white hair, her soft eyes demand respect though.
Light explains: our manifestation in physical form assumes different colours and different shades but we are all equally an important part of the rainbow after a summer storm. Colours don’t matter, we are all beautiful and ultimately just fine the way we are.
True? More I read about psychology, more I learn endless numbers of deviances, pathologies and wrongs. Pop psychology is nicer as it tends to make you feel good. Real psychology is not for the faint hearted though. The Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, the most authoritative manual on mental health, increased the number of diagnostic categories from 106 in the 50s to 297 today (although homosexuality was thankfully removed in 1973).
According to many critics, there seems to be an increasing tendency to medicalise not extreme patterns of behaviour, diagnosing individuals with mental illnesses outside the context of cultural diversity and the variety of human experiences. And without going as far as that, sometimes impossible and manufactured ideal models of normality and success make us feel we are falling short of expectations.
But we are free though, to a certain extent. We are, if we want to be. Or better, if our awareness allows us to be. We’ve got a very large range of potential lifestyles these days. Opportunities to manifest ourselves under different shades of colour. It wasn’t always like that, and it still isn’t in some parts of the world. We can choose a more fitting lifestyle, aspire to something closer to our true self, if we want. We can do Yoga!
I tell you a cool, alternative model of success. I asked my friend Mark how he wants to look like when he’s old. Mark wants to be skinny, crossed legged, with slightly crooked teeth but a beautiful smile, in a simple bungalow on a cliff top on a tropical island. Wearing a pair of shorts, nothing more. Being there, with soft, sparkling eyes, skinny and content, staring at the blue ocean.
What more would I add to my friend’s picture of success? I know what… yes! The sunset I once saw in Boracay, in the Philippines. The skinny body, minimalistic accommodation, even the crooked teeth are all good, if the theatre of Nature provides the entertainment. Dramatic shades of pink to yellow, red, blue and all colours in between. So perfect nothing more perfect was ever created. We both have a few decades of living to grow the soft, sparkling eyes. If God wants. Inshallah.
And what’s your favourite colour? It doesn’t matter. Just smile.