Sitting at the red light on the way to work this morning, I found myself consciously paying attention to things around me.  Things like the beautiful clouds in a sunny sky after days of rain, and leaves falling from the trees.  Realizing I probably should pay attention to the cars,  I noticed that all of the cars passing me going in the opposite direction were white.  Followed by all black.  As I kept looking, I observed, with the exception of the very occasional red truck, every vehicle was black, white or silver/gray. And here I was, sitting in the middle, one, little, yellow bug.

Very rarely do I want the spotlight on myself.  I would be much more comfortable sitting in a corner alone.  But in a moment of pure indulgence, I chose a car that is hard to miss.  People tell me they wish THEY had a car like mine.  People smile and slug each other when they see it.  My friends want to ride in it with the top down.  It is a HAPPY color.  And yet, as I drove through the neighborhood where my school is located, I saw nothing but black, white and gray cars along the street and in the driveways.  I pulled into the school parking lot, and aside from the two red trucks, it was again, pretty much all black and white.  Why?

My particular area of town is pretty conservative and relatively affluent.  Seems the more money you have, the less color you use.  Why is that?  Why are beige and black classic and never goes out of style?  Because it’s easy. Why do we want to look like everyone else?  Sure those cars look great right after they’ve been washed, but other than that I’m not sure.  Again, why limit yourself to being colorless when you could let all your colors shine?

The truth is, we’re not always encouraged to let all of our colors shine.  We’re not encouraged to experiment to see what we can or want to do. Certainly you’ll more successful if you just do “A”.  Not “A” and a little bit of “B” and/or “C” because that might cause you to be not as focused on “A”, and therefore not as successful.  We need to “find our passion” and focus all of our energies in that one area.  People who go from one thing to another are not focused or are considered “flighty”.  They’re not serious and can’t be taken seriously.  It truly limits us as human beings as though each of us is only meant to do one thing.  I just think we’re a little more complex than that.

Last night I watched the Linda Ronstadt documentary film, The Sound of My Voice.  This is a girl who was raised in a diverse family of German and Mexican heritage where she grew up listening to a large and diverse variety of music.  Everything from Mariachi to Opera, Pop, Rock and Standards, she says she just loved to sing – it didn’t matter what genre of music it was.  Fortunately for her, her family not only encouraged this but everyone sang in her family so it was just who they were.  At 18 Linda left for L.A. to pursue singing.  Notice I didn’t say a career, as she says she just wanted to sing.

She began as a pop singer who also sang rock, country, blues, and later opera and what I would call “standards”, finally reaching back to her roots and singing Mariachi.  Each time she said she wanted to do something new, everyone told her she wouldn’t be as successful and discouraged her. Each time she did what she wanted, because she just wanted to SING.  Great music can be any genre and she just wanted to sing great music.

In 2009, Linda discovered she had Parkinson’s disease, mainly due to the fact that her voice wasn’t responding like it used to.  In the movie she says of her singing now, “I can hear [the music] in my mind, but I can’t make the sounds any more,” says Ronstadt. “Singing is complex. … I was made most aware of it by having it vanish.”

Just like the yellow car, everyone wants to be like Linda.  They wish they had the nerve to just try “whatever” like she did.  But things get in the way.  The job, the spouse, the kids, the bills, the social pressure, the family expectations.  We settle for a little happy instead of a lot of joy.  There is always going to be hard work and heartache and disappointment, but that’s just part of life.  But what happens if you don’t explore some other colors while you have the opportunity and then the time runs out?  It just makes sense to me that while I have a choice, when I can still decide a direction in my life, why not make it yellow instead of black or white?