It's REALLY Green

There is a new commercial that's been playing that I find really charming. It's the Lowe's Hardware commercial that depicts a very young couple who are 'setting up housekeeping' in their first new home.

These young people are overwhelmed and floundering around with various home repairs and crises. In each scenario presented, it shows the young lady, on her phone, most likely asking her father for advice, while the young man struggles to deal with what ever it going on.

The one vignette that I love the most, is when they are standing in a room they have just painted, and he has a wet paint roller in his hand and the entire room - walls and ceiling are bright, Kermit the frog green! The young lady is crying on the phone as she sort of sobs out the words, 'It's REALLY.... GREEN!'

It cracks me up, and yet... we've all been there! That dreadful moment when you realize that it didn't turn out like you planned and hoped for.

That green looked great on a little tiny swatch from the hardware store, but they didn't realize that when it was greatly magnified it would look much, much different.

Often in life, we make decisions based on a particular view of a situation, possibly too limited a view. People fall in love and get married after only a brief 'sampling' of who their partner really is. As soon as they are married and together for a while, suddenly, that 'color' that looked so lovely is really intense and not at all what was expected or desired.

Of course, all is not lost. the young couple can repaint their 'green room.' Many decisions can be reversed, or the trajectory can be corrected and altered.

I like to think, however, in terms of the principle that is demonstrated that when we only look at a small sample, or a small, isolated piece of something, we don't necessarily see all that we need to see.

I believe that life gives us glimpses sometimes, of problematic patterns that are at work within us, by showing it to us in other people, or the world around us in magnified form.

If someone in your life is really annoying and upsetting you, take a look at the patterns that most bother you, and see if you might have a little of that in you... even if it's in 'swatch' size portions. If the problematic pattern is being expressed around us at the same level that we do it, we wouldn't even notice it. it would seem 'normal' and 'acceptable' to us. That is why life sometimes uses the mirrors around us (other people and the world stage) to show us the magnified versions of that junk. We can't ignore it... and it usually really upsets and irritates us.

This isn't easy work. Admitting that we do something (either to others, or to ourselves) that we don't like in other people... isn't easy! It is, however, the only way to freedom. We can't repaint the room, until we realize that it's the wrong color. Life actually does a favor by showing us the intense and magnified color in those around us, in an attempt to get us to 'switch swatches' before we do our own painting (by allowing the pattern to grown and develop in us, until it becomes much more pervasive in our experience.)

If you find yourself exclaiming either in anger, sorrow, irritation or any other 'negative' evaluation, "It's REALLY GREEN" then take a look at your own swatch, and examine it carefully. You might need to switch swatches to make sure that the paint jobs you complete turn out the way you want them to be.