White

Someday, I'm going to have a big blank wall in my house. I will paint it white, then invite my children to paint/color/draw on the wall to their heart's content. Every once in a while, when it starts to get too full, I will take pictures and then paint over the whole thing with a fresh coat (or two) of new white paint.

White-- while technically not a color-- is a beautiful "color" nonetheless. It's attractive, appealing, and somehow even interesting. Some, looking at a white wall, or a white canvas, or a white sheet of paper, may look at it and see nothing. It's boring. It's dull. I look at all that white, and I see potential. I am not an artist in the main sense of the word, but if I were, I would never be able to leave any white surface blank for long. Or if I did, I would not be able to look at that white surface and not see something beautiful and exciting and amazing in my mind, telling myself that someday, that white surface would be transformed.

Instead, though, for me, my "white surface" is usually more figurative. It manifests itself in the newly-cleared and cleaned countertop just begging for a fresh batch of cookies to be baked. Or a cleared-off table after dinner asking for a card game to be played upon it. Or an empty bookshelf inviting new books or knick-knacks to be placed upon it, to add their own "spirit" to the room.

Not surprising, then, my house is rarely found with an empty surface anywhere. When this happens, I may be found going into a frenzy, desperate for a single clean surface anywhere. When my life gets so utterly cluttered and disorganized, it gets difficult for me to be creative at all. Even fixing a simple dinner becomes an unbearable and overwhelming chore. So I clean (which, in a way, is also a creative process and the only enjoyable way for me to look at it). And as soon as a surface, or closet, or room, is clean and tidy once more, I find I can finally breathe easy again. I can relax again. I can think again. I can be creative again. But, herein lies the irony; because no surface/area/room remains clean for long, thanks to the overwhelming urge to look at the potential of that "boring" space and do something new and exciting with it.


But in between the active cleaning and creating, it's nice to step back and look at all that "white" for a moment and admire its purity, its dignity, and-- most of all-- its latent potential.

Beautiful, isn't it?