Your Blank Canvas: Choose Your Own Colours

Flowers are red, young man

Green leaves are green

There’s no need to see flowers any other way

Than the way they always have been seen

Hmmm, do you bristle
when you heard the words “Repeat after Me”?

My mind has a tendency
to go off on its own now and then on tangents that seem unrelated to what I am
doing. I have learned that there is always a good reason for these mental
diversions. If I give my mind permission to wander, the reason eventually
reveals itself.

This morning the Harry
Chapin song “Flowers are Red” popped into my mind. For younger generations who
may not have heard of him, Chapin was one of the most successful
singer/songwriters in the 1970’s known for his story songs.

“Flowers are Red” tells
the story of a young boy’s first day at school. He grabs a crayon and starts drawing.
The teacher chastises him for drawing without permission and, after determining
that he was drawing multi-coloured flowers, delivers the lines at the top of
this post. The young below replies:

There
are so many colours in the rainbow

So
many colours in the morning sun

So
many colours in the flowers and I see every one

The teacher calls him sassy, instructs him that There’s way that things should be done
and puts him in a corner with the admonition:

It’s
for your own good

And
you won’t come out ‘til you get it right

And
all responding like you should

The young boy feels
frightened and conforms to the teacher’s demand. Some years later, the boy goes
to another school with a more progressive teacher who encourages him to express
himself in his drawing. But he replies with the words that have been drilled
into him.

Flowers
are red young man

Green
leaves are green

There’s
no need to see flowers any other way

Than
the way they always have been seen

“Flowers are Red” warns
us what can happen if we supress a child’s spirit. It is also an anthem for
those of us who are driven to go their own way even if it is not what is
expected of us. And also, it now occurs to me, a metaphor to encourage us in
these times when our lives are squeezed into narrow confines that our spirit
rebels against.

Our life is a blank
canvas that we paint as we find our way. But it is not a paint-by-the numbers
exercise. There are parameters we need to operate within. But our flowers can
and should be any colour we choose – and we should be able to draw them
whenever we feel the urge.

~ Now
Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting
Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

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