Day: May 12, 2026

“Life is about using the whole box of crayons” Author Unknown

I have a dim but pleasant memory of visiting a nice lady who lived next door to my family when I was about four or five years old. She was an artist and her home was filled with modern furniture unlike anything I had ever before seen. Some of her paintings festooned the walls and they were magnificent creations of color and strange forms. I would later think of her when I watched the movie Auntie Mame and saw the avant-garde furnishings and lifestyle of the main character. That is how I still think of the lady who lived next door, a free spirit with a creative mind who was kind to children.

I vaguely remember coloring with her and feeling so calm in her presence. My mother claimed that the lady was quite impressed with my shading and ability to control the crayon rather than just scribbling all over the page like most children my age. I have to take my mother’s word for truth because I don’t remember the details of my visits with the neighbor other than being in awe of how different her interior decorating was from the more traditional settings that I had always seen. 

I grew up with a fondness of art and one of my most audacious dreams as a child was to get one of those huge boxes of crayons that seemingly had every shade of tints that I had ever seen. The biggest box I ever owned was the one that was just a step above the smallest offering with two rows of crayons rather than only one row representing the colors of the rainbow. I took extra care of my crayons keeping them neatly aligned in the box so I was horrified when I one day took an art class and the instructor insisted that I tear off the paper around the waxy sticks and break them into smaller pieces that would allow me to better shade my compositions. I enjoyed having my crayons lined up in glorious rainbows without any flaws.

One of my brothers hated to color so his answer to a task that he found tedious was to just grab a brown crayon and scribble all over the paper. Since the teachers knew that our father had died they tied his habit to depression and called my mother in for a conference. They suggested that my brother might need some counseling and used his brown artwork as proof of his sadness. When my mother suggested that it might be a good idea to first find out from him why he always submitted brown scribbles, they immediately called him into the meeting. When asked why he always chose brown and then only scribbled with it he insisted that he hated coloring and just wanted to get the project over with as quickly as possible. His only sadness was in being required to perform a task that was odious to him. With a bit of pressure from the teacher and the counselor he finally agreed to choose more cheerful colors if that was what they wanted. 

I laugh about how different my brother and I have always been and I marvel at my mother’s patience in allowing us to follow our own dreams. I think she understood quite well that the two of us were destined for differing ways of engaging with life. His would be a world of numbers and analytical tasks and mine would revolve around doing my utmost to make learning feel magical. I used lots of colors in my words and in the environment that I created for my students. I understood that those young people who looked at me with anticipation represented all of the colors that the world has ever conceived. Not two were exactly alike. I had my giant box of colors in the many personalities, dreams, and abilities of the thousands of young people who came to my classroom. I suppose that I wanted them to remember my lessons the way I remember my neighbor’s colorful and exciting home where I was felt so comfortable and understood. 

We can complain about diversity as though it is something that diminishes us but that would be so wrong. The bigger the box of crayons, the more possibilities there are for creating a wondrous work of art. So it is with people. All of the many colors and shades of their personalities and cultures and ideas are beautiful just like a giant box of crayons. The artistry of the world is incredible with no one place or type of person being more pleasing than the others. We need everyone just as they are. Diversity moves our world forward and creates a collage that brightens the world rather than diminishing it. 

I think of how that giant box of crayons always made me dream of possibilities and now I see that all of those different shades represent the variety of the world. The lady next door introduced me to a way of living that I had never before seen and I still remember it because it was so beautiful. That is how I see the world today. The many shades of our world enliven our planet and make it a wonderful place to be.