Life gets rather "interesting" once you have gently released the whole notion of good versus evil. I mean, it is so much easier, faced with all the craziness in the world and even in our personal lives, to play the old battle game, to put on the armor, pick up the shield, the sword, the crossbow (and modern equivalents) and run screaming into battle. (OK, so I've been watching a little too much "Vikings"!)
Once you recognize only a force for "good" in the world, it's disconcerting at first. You may have changed, but the world hasn't. You may be able to dimly see "that of God" in everyone (as the Quakers teach), but if a person's channel to the Divine is so blocked as to be, for all practical purposes, nonexistent, and they are still wreaking havoc on the world, the old temptation to do something is so strong. You want to fight. You want to criticize. You want to rail. You want to plead. You want to march in protest. You want to beg. You want to shame. You want to show them. You want to show the world. You want to make a legal case or a moral one. You want to teach. You want to convert. You want to save. Yet somehow, none of it feels right any more.
I returned to oil painting the other day. My attempt was rather lame, but it reminded me of something that may be relevant here. We all know of ROY G. BV, the mnemonic for "red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet" on the color wheel. Well, in fact there are only three "primary" colors (red, yellow and blue) from which all other colors in nature and art are derived. I am not all that partial to yellow, but if I arbitrarily decided to remove yellow from all my paintings, and from my palette, I would immediately lose all the variations on orange and green as well since they have yellow in them. Indeed, I'd be left with only half a color wheel. As a painter, I know that opposite (complementary) colors are crucial to creating a rich painting, and that there is no way to permanently "eliminate" any individual color and still create art.
I'm not sure what this means on the international stage. And I'm just barely "there" in person, grasping only that my personal "life painting" is the only one I can really control. When a person or condition seems to be manifesting a hue that I'm not partial to, and I do not understand why they have chosen to be the way they are in my world, I'm at that point in life where I no longer wish to fight. Instead, I remind myself that this is all part of my color palette, which is only the tip of the iceberg of all the colors in nature. I can chose to use that undesired color as an undercoat or mixed with its complement, enriching today's blend of colors...or I just don't have to use it at all, and focus instead on colors I'm more fond of. I'm the painter. With each new painting, each new day, I can chose what colors to use, how to use them, and where to focus. Faced with all that's happening in the world, it sure is nice just to have that little bit of power.
