Which color do you have?

March is a month of colors. When nature blooms with colorful flowers and fresh leaves, we get ready to embrace the festivities that come along. The first big festival is Holi, the celebration of colors. Many mythological events are associated with it. It is the festival of forgiveness, love, joy, and the triumph of good over evil. We can consider it as a symbolic event to leave the bad habits and bury the hatchet.

Overall it’s a big celebration with love, joy, laughter, food, and color. Due to the social distancing situation, most of us are not playing Holi or visiting friends and relatives. Here are some thoughts on the colors, what we hold, how we pour/ apply it on others. It is a different perspective altogether.

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.

” – Paul Gauguin

How do we apply colors to others? It could be with water or dry colors. We could pour them on others only what we have with us. If I have green, I can apply green to others but not any other colors. Whatever is in my hand goes over to the other person.

Does it say anything more about life? If you are upset for some reason before going behind the wheels, and someone honks and overtakes you, what would happen? It is easy to get irritated with a fellow driver. You may not have the patience to think that he/she may be in some hurry to reach and show courtesy. But if you are in a happy mood, it is easier to give way to others.

What do you spread when you are angry? What do you radiate when you are in sheer joy? Whatever is there in our mind, we distribute it to our family and friends, irrespective of where we caught it unless we observe and be aware of what we are giving to others.

It opens up the topic of what do you put into your mind, either knowingly or unknowingly. In this information era, we are consumers of the unlimited supply of information. It could be by a newspaper, TV, internet, innumerable mobile apps, What’s app, phone calls, or directly from people. Those sources which get unpleasant things to your mind would decide on what do you transmit to others.

One way is to restrict the source of information by avoiding them or building a resistant wall if they are not giving pleasant thoughts/feelings to you. If it is not feasible, then we need to control the internal processing that happens within us. More on being susceptible to negative influences would be coming in a separate blog. 

While we spend hours and hours feeding external information to our system, it is a good practice to spend at least 30 minutes a day thinking about their impact on our behavior. Maybe as a meditation, introspection, self-analysis, daily journaling, or be mindful of your feeling.

An easier way to work on what we transmit to others is to assess our feelings. As feelings are the conscious experience of emotional status, check out the list, find your mental status, and work on moving it up layer by layer.

—Anitha KC

Images: @beckerworks, @seitamaaphotography, google images