The Color White

White is my favorite color. I love to wear it, see it, decorate with it, feel it, surround myself with it, and everything I buy; my first choice is white.  Being the mom of 4 young boys and loving to wear white and have it all around is kind of a travesty.  Nothing stays white, but that is because it shows everything, which is part of my point.

It’s like my life and my heart. Everything I am is a reflection of my life and my heart.  And to my utter delight, white just happens to also be the reflection of all colors.  When I bought my first pair of Tieks, my favorite ballet flat shoes, they were white.  My cabinets are white. My office is white. My bed is white.

Carpet?  White, but only in my closet.  Haha. I’m not that crazy... with 4 boys. My car is white, there was no other color consideration.  The interior, that’s white too. The dress I wore to my husband's funeral?  White.

Now, let’s be clear, the white I’m referring to has nothing to do with human skin colors. I’m talking about the colors in the color palate with which we all as humans of any color create our lives and preferences from.  Since white shows everything, you can’t hide the dirty parts. 

Those dirty parts, they speak louder than the white, which is so simply what it is, it can’t be anything but that. If anything gets on the white, there is no hiding it. So, with white things, you have two choices; you can either leave the blemish, stain or mark there and know it’s there or do the work to clean it up. 

If you leave it, the white does not let it fade into the background, merge with other colors or otherwise deceive you into thinking something that is there, isn’t. So then that means, if you clean it up, it really is clean and if you don’t, you know it's there. 

With white, there is the risk that you may think you’ll always be cleaning.  When I debated whether to get white or dark interior in my car, I thought about my 4 little boys.  Would I be cleaning all the time?  I really don’t like high maintenance things. 

I don’t want to add to my to-do list, but even more than that, I want to live in my happy which is reality too. That means if there’s something there, I want to see it and know about it.  No hiding, not anymore.  I went with my heart and got white seats for my car. 

Ya know what… I regretted it, but only for the first 3 months I had the car. The interior was constantly getting dirty.  Little foot prints of smudged dirt, a marker here and a smooshed blueberry there.  None of those things were hidden.  They were so visible and boy could you see them.

Every time there was a mark, I’d teach my boys.  Look, do you see that before you put your wet foot that has dirt on it on the seat, it was clean? Now look at it… it’s dirty.  What do we do?  Leave it?  Or clean it up?  They didn’t care.  Leave it they’d say.  Nope, I said, we clean it up.

Here’s a baby wipe and there’s the garbage, let me know when you’re done and I’ll approve it if it looks good.  Then guess what happened?  It started to stay clean.  Why?  Because they started to learn that if they make a mess, they clean it up. They learned it’s easier to keep it clean than go to all the trouble of cleaning it up. 

We started to establish a better pattern. And the outcome?  It was more awareness. Another thing happened too.  Because of the new awareness, when there was that dirty foot print, or smudge or smashed blueberry, they started to grab the baby wipes to clean it up before I even asked. 

They started taking responsibility for the messes they made and my car was cleaner than it had ever been.  Progress!  In reality, buying colors that hide messes, doesn’t usually save time or work.  I’ve found that you clean it all up sooner or later. To me, it’s easier to stay on top of things as they come.

I know what I have is actually clean or legitimately dirty.  The beauty in this, is that I know that it’s really clean, because you can’t hide the dirt.  With any other color, you can allow the dirty to blend in. It’s less noticeable. You don’t feel as obligated to get to it.

This creates another problem, it’s still there later. And in the meantime?  You’re living in your own mess.  With other colors, messes do blend, but if you look closer, you can still see the dirt but from far away, it’s not so noticeable. 

You know it’s also not actually clean, it’s just easier to convince yourself, you can deal with it later. What I like most about white is that what you see is real.  If it’s dirty, you see it.  If it’s clean it’s really clean.  That feels good to me.  I don’t like to hide things. 

White holds me accountable for what is.  I used to think it’s better to have colors that hide messy.  Now I’m uncomfortable with that.  I don’t like hiding things, because I know it’s there. If it exists, there is no hiding it for any good purpose.  

I used to think, the less maintenance the better, hide the dirt, then I won’t feel obligated to spend my time cleaning it all up.  Since it’s not as readily noticeable, I can ignore it.  It can pile up. I can pretend it’s not there and I can live in a delusion of thinking I have what I want, without actually having it. 

That’s not seeing what is truth. Now, I want to know what’s there, look at it, address it and clean it up.  Really clean it up. This feels like a life lesson the color white is teaching me. Isn’t it interesting that angels, deity and heavenly things are all portrayed either white or with a white glow?

The science of white being the color that reflects all the others might be partly why the symbol became what it is. Of course the meaning gets twisted or lost in time, but white likely, authentically and practically was truth without blemish. 

Nothing that was anything but the clarity of the pureness of all that is color and truth. Whatever color you bring is what you get reflected back to you.  I wanted to wear white to my husband's funeral because it felt more like the heavenly symbol.

I wanted to be as close to him as possible which to me included being dressed in white.  The traditional black mourning clothing made me feel darker and heavier and more far away from Grant. That’s not who I am and if a tradition doesn’t work for me, why would I follow it? 

The color white made me feel lighter and closer to Heaven, so it was the logical choice.  I do the things I do because it’s what I feel.  White is light and light is how I want to feel.  So now I clean things up and know that the whites I have are really white and the dirt I have is really there and I’m good with both now.