Crayons, Markers, and the Pursuit of Happiness

           As a young, fearless girl, some of my favorite hobbies included climbing flimsy pine trees and scaring my grandmother half to death, refusing to wear any kind of coat in the brutal blizzards of Pennsylvania winters and infuriating my grandmother half to death, and running around my yard naked (under her watch, of course) and embarrassing my grandmother half to death.  Needless to say, I had a knack for irritating my grandmother, and she had a knack for irritating me.  We had hardly anything in common.  I could only find one single point of commonality between the two of us—we both loved to draw.  Whenever I tired of torturing my poor grandma, I dragged her to our kitchen table and made her sit still while I searched for my battered box of broken crayons and markers and stealthily stole all of the paper from our printer.  I scattered the paper around on the table and generously offered her my black, white, and gray crayons and markers before starting on my own masterpiece.  My imagination never failed me, and soon I found my paper (and the tabletop underneath it) covered in ambiguous purple, pink, and blue scribbles.  Proudly, I showed my work of art to my grandma and basked in the glory of her praise.  I bounced giddily up and down as she got up to add it to my own personal display case—the refrigerator.  As she sat down again, though, I noticed her drawing: a simple yet stunning portrait of a little boy dragging a beat-up wagon behind him.  And, of course, she had done it all in black.  As she noticed my obvious captivation with the subtly intricate illustration, she smiled and instructed me to sit down.  I inwardly groaned, fully aware that she planned on gracing me with one of her incredulously monotonous and pointless stories.  I did, however, feel slightly remorseful about scaring, infuriating, and embarrassing her earlier that day, so I reluctantly gave into my restless conscience and sat down obediently to listen.  Now, I could take up pages upon pages writing about all of the unnecessary details and pointless anecdotes that she added in, but, for the sake of everyone reading this, I will summarize.  Once upon a time, there lived a poor little boy who loved to draw. Everyone loved his work—he had a genuine talent for art.  Despite this, however, he only ever drew his pictures in black crayon.  When someone asked him why he did this, he stubbornly replied that he only liked black.  And that was how the story ended.  Unlike most of my grandma’s stories, she brought this one up again and again after she told it to me for the first time.  She finds it very inspiring for reasons that I have yet to ascertain.  As I recently spent Thanksgiving with her and she told me the story for what seemed like the hundredth time this year, I began to think more deeply about it.  While it does seem utterly pointless, I found myself considering it in terms of the boy's happiness. According to my grandma, the boy felt complete and utter contentment with his life.  He only, however, allowed himself to experience one realm of happiness.  He had thoroughly explored the depths of the realm familiar to him--the black one--and thus remained unaware of the infinite number of other dimensions of happiness.  While some may consider this a good thing--never exposing yourself to risks, staying within the boundaries of your comfort zone--if you limit yourself to these strictly defined boundaries you may never reach your full potential in terms of happiness and contentment.  Only when you free your mind to openly embrace all dimensions, realms, and colors of happiness can you truly feel that you have reached true fulfillment.  Perhaps my grandma really did not have any particular reason for telling this story, but I like to think that she told it with the intention of encouraging me to explore each color of happiness instead of just settling for what I feel comfortable with.  And maybe, just maybe, instead of infuriating her or finding some way to embarrass her, I will take her advice.

Complaints and Restraints

   Usually, I consider myself a fairly tolerant person.  I put up with my friends' seemingly endless political banter, my mom's constant nagging about how I need to figure out what I want to do with my life, and my dog's strange obsession with licking any exposed parts of my body.  I put up with my sister's weekly tantrums about going to ballet and my dad's new-found fascination with remote-control airplanes.  I can not, however, put up with people when they complain about working hard.  Unfortunately, as a high school student, I encounter this every day and have only recently learned to hold my tongue when I hear this complaining instead of hostilely refuting the pathetic arguments. This past weekend, I finally agreed to let my parents drag me around half the country visiting colleges that, quite honestly, I had little to no interest in.  At one of the colleges, I visited my cousin and, much to her dismay, shadowed her for the day.  I followed her all around campus, bored out of my mind until she took me to her English class.  Now, seeing as this was indeed an honors English class at an actual college, I expected some intense seminar-type discussion or an equally as intense writing workshop.  Instead, the professor divided the class up into small groups for an hour-long peer editing session of a five-page paper on, ironically enough, In Cold Blood. As I looked over the papers in a state of disbelief, I heard the subtle yet distinct groans from the kids at my table as they complained about having to analyze the book and how long they spent working on their papers.  Without thinking, I began to laugh.  As much as I sometimes resent all of the work that I put into my own English class, after looking at those papers I resolved to never think that way again.  As high school juniors, we could analyze books and write papers at a higher level than this group of college freshmen.  This could not happen, of course, without the arguably insane amount of time and effort that we all put into our work--and, of course, a lack of complaining.  The more complaints people make, the less inclined they feel to work hard.  This network of complaints forms a sort of restraint not only on those who do the complaining but also on those who hear the constant whining.  They subconsciously convince themselves that they will not effectively manage their workload, thus mentally blocking themselves from unleashing their full potential.