HOW TO BE A PRISM

/ April 7, 2016

 

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I’ve discovered in the search for who I am that I’m not just one thing.

You see… I kept making the mistake of trying to define myself.  I am not JUST anything.  I am all the different colors between and including black and white. I am a prism reflecting myself into the world.

I wasn’t always a prism.

The last few years I’ve been slapping paint on a canvas trying to create the picture I thought other people wanted to see.  I was truly a million different things all at once. I wanted to be the happy you needed, or the fun girl that made you forget you were an adult for awhile.

I was the stand-in girlfriend that you could call to pay attention to you when you were between commitments.  I was the wife that would change the world to reduce your stress. I was the mom that would dress her age and hide her cleavage as to not embarrass you in front of your friends.  I was the friend who would act 20 years younger and be your wing man.  I was the girl who defied all her comfort zones to please you.

I ended up with a brown and grey blob that resembled nothing.

I broke down.  I had to start over.  The world fell apart and all my different pieces weren’t going to be able to keep it together.  I reflected nothing of meaning into the world. I had to step back, evaluate all my pieces, and find people who could help me work on the pieces I liked.

So I looked around and found people with qualities I liked.  I borrowed some bright white from someone special and painted over the brown and grey mess. That took awhile.  It always takes time to paint over old patterns to prepare for new ones.

Then I met some people who taught me how to make sunshine yellow and yet another who sparkled and taught me how to make glitter. I’ve borrowed the darker colors too.  Because without dark the light colors don’t seem so light.

I’ve learned to create my own colors from the colorful people around me. I’ve learned to reflect the colors I’ve collected and enjoy the beauty my prism creates in others.

I hope what you see makes you smile because in some beautiful way you’ve contributed to the masterpiece that is me.

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14 thoughts on “HOW TO BE A PRISM”

  3. And, in part, through you, I have met many of those same people, and they have called out colors long dormant, as do you. The saying goes, “What goes around comes around.” Speaking of which, reblogging.

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  5. That’s a fascinating metaphor Hasty. I’ve played around with the prism effect in many applications and there is something fundamental about the paradigm. For instance the universe itself seems to have prism like qualities on many levels – if you think about a prism as a black box that accepts inputs on one level and converts them to outputs on another. For instance quantum mechanics posits that all options already exist we just have to choose one (the choice being the prism here) and it becomes solid reality, it is actualized- at which point it becomes the world of Newtonian physics whereby all things have a precursor – or cause and effect. In this case the wide “spectrum”of choices is the rainbow entering the prism and the white light on the other side is the single choice exiting the prism (many “how does the universe work” questions seem to have solutions that are the reverse of the way we typically see the world – as if we are used to looking out and it reverses when we look in.) Another example of the prism effect is leadership. A good leader takes the team inputs (all the different colors) and focuses them into a single homogeneous white light that comes to a point on the problem. Problems themselves drive awareness the other way through the prism – for instance a single problem that appears homogeneous (the white light entering the prism) is disassembled by our intellect/soul/heart into various perspectives or colors that we can manipulate to effect a solution. There is also a correlation between blogging and a prism. In internet tech there are a number of paradigms used to understand and drive change – a way to understand. One such paradigm says that a perspective is the “one to many paradigm” – which would be the blogger writing for a wider audience. (e-mail is usually “one to one”) And the response of the wider audience in the comments would be “Many to One”. this is the same paradigm as the one white light entering the prism (which in this case would be the internet) and impacting the many – each differently as visualized in colors.

    Anyway, I could go on about this, but i’m sure you see the power of the prism metaphor that you have delineated. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of self-awareness before, so that is new to me, but it certainly seems to have a solid connection. i like to think about this sort of stuff, so my first question would be why does the prism paradigm have so much power? I suspect it is because of the where the universe comes from. I’m talking philosophically but it also works physically. the Big Bang posits that all space/time came into existence at one point in time and space. I think we are looking at one side of a primary prism – the side where all the colors (our world of individuals and separated concepts) exists. Which would mean that on the other side of the Big Bang there exists a “white” (homogeneous)world where all things are as One – all is integrated. And I suspect it is our job to find out how this world around us fits back through the prism to the far side. That empowers collaboration, integration, love (as Socrates says – “desire to be one with”), etc, as driving forces to reassemble that which the prism of the Big Bang has disassembled.

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  7. You always make me smile because I am happy you are part of my world. You make my heart smile. You make my world feel safer. You have taught me so so much. I am forever thankful for you.

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  9. Exactly how I feel sometimes. And I think it can translate to our professional lives as well. No one is just a doctor, just a teacher, just a lawyer, just a CEO. That’s just 10% of who we really are. Each person is a universe, with its planets and stars and galaxies. So vast, so different, but so united that they make us who we are.

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  10. I LOVE this post! It seems we spend most of our lives defining who we are in one way or another. It is part of our time here, I guess. This is a great way to look at it. A fresh way to think of it all. Thank you!

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