Staring out a coffee shop window at a gray, 30-degree California midmorning. Snowflakes wander idly the way leftover foot traffic wanders down a forgotten side street, having foresaken or missed the main attraction.

I’m thinking about life and how it happens in shades. Sometimes it’s by your own hand – you paint something on the wall, let it dry, come back and like it or not; try it in different lighting, give it some time, walk by it countless times; can’t decide. Sometimes you live with it. Sometimes you paint over. Maybe you add a finish, change the bulb, open the shades. Sometimes in the end you go with wallpaper.

And sometimes life happens to you. Someone spills paint on your wall or you wake up one morning to graffiti. Someone tried to help you paint and missed the vision. The board voted on a different color than what you would have chosen. Now you regard your wall every day with sadness, frustration, vexation, confusion, resignation, or a combination. Think about what you could do. Can it be fixed? Undone? Could you arrange the room differently? Change the decor to match? Could you cover it with posters and pretend it didn’t happen?

I want to take a closer look than I oftentimes do at people’s walls. Seek to understand their colors and how they feel about them. What may have transpired to end up this way. Shine a light a little bit closer. Care.

And I’d like to figure out what color is on my wall right now.

-LS