To Wherever He Found Purple
23 Oct
There is a man whose favorite color is purple. He could choose blue or brown, which are certainly more man-like colors. Or red, which emanates power. Or green, orange, or almost any other color. But this man has stayed with purple. Mostly because he didn’t choose. He was a young boy when he found purple. And he just knew.
When he learned, as he grew up, that purple wasn’t a typical color choice for a boy – that it is usually chosen by girls or by boys who also like to dress up in skirts – he asked himself a question: Is this information relevant to my experience of a favorite color? And he received an answer: No. So he kept purple as his favorite color.
It’s interesting how we make decisions in life. Sometimes we align with our spirits and we choose what is for the highest good. Other times we align with our fears or expectations, especially those that we share with our culture, and we choose whatever we think will most ameliorate those fears or expectations.
The man who chose his favorite color in spirit, and stuck to it when he learned a cultural story that might have turned him away from it, didn’t do everything in spirit. For instance, he believed for as long as he could remember that he would find the perfect girl. And he knew exactly what she would be like.
The story he told himself and others about her hasn’t changed since he was a little boy. Nor has it changed since he wrote a story about her in college. The story that he wrote back then was a good story. One that he kept and gave to me. And it feels relevant to share with you how it starts:
When I was little, I dreamed I would meet the perfect girl. She would be smart, pretty, athletic, and good in bed. But not too good, because then I’d wonder if she had had too much practice before me. I didn’t care if she was Jewish (though my parents certainly did), but I knew she needed to be organized. I lived a cluttered life, and she would give me some balance. That’s why I imagined she wouldn’t be completely nuts. It’s difficult enough to deal with one person.
And she would sleep erratically, like me. But we would keep the same erratic sleep schedule because I would want to hold her at night and because our conversations (and other pleasurable activities) would be fertile. We would talk about life, philosophy, and epistemological reality for hours into the night. And while conversing, we might even enjoy a good bottle of wine. But it couldn’t be too good, because we’d need to be frugal, especially after college, in the early years, when money would be tight.
And finances wouldn’t matter because we’d be in love. She’d know it and I’d know it, and we’d be sure of it. We’d even say the words every now and then…
The stories that we tell ourselves and each other often sound so good. They sweep us off our feet. They have us believing that if we throw ourselves into romantic love, or war, or food, or alcohol, or whatever it is that takes us away from a true understanding of ourselves, then we will find what it is that we are looking for.
Unfortunately, while this belief contains within it a fleeting reality, it is only – very – fleeting. The girl sweeps us off of our feet until she doesn’t any longer. Winning the war settles our need to win wars until it doesn’t any longer. The cheesecake or the wine calms our nerves until it doesn’t any longer.
The man who likes purple knows well the fleeting quality of the stories we tell ourselves. Because the rest of the story he kept – after the excerpt I shared with you – was about a girl who was wonderful, but who didn’t fit the story in his head. And he was unable to give up the perfect story for the wonderful girl.
The journey that the man is on, now, is to reclaim his presence in the world that he knew before he began telling himself stories, or listening to the stories of others. In that world, there was no-story. Just peace. And joy. And acceptance of things. However they are and however they choose to be.
The man sometimes still believes that he doesn’t understand no-story. That he lives in a world anchored by story. But he reminds himself, often, that he already lived in a world of no-story. That was where he found purple. And if he wants to spend time in that world, all he needs to do is go back. To wherever he found purple.