Thursday 27 October 2011

Colours really do affect our moods

It's interesting how the landscape had completely changed in Vermont overnight. The sun didn’t shine much at all yesterday and the colours were all dull. A majority of the trees had lost their leaves seemingly overnight. It was much cooler and I have to admit I did not feel as creative and inspired as I had the days before.
It felt almost as if the colour had been taken out of my soul leaving me feeling depleted and oh so blah. Searching for inspiration, I read through my emails and found the Daily Om message from the day before. It talked about the fact that colours are very important to our psyches. Before we see anything else we see colour. Based on our associations with the colours we see, we form unconscious opinions about our surroundings. I immediately breathed a sigh of relief because I had the answer for why I felt so blue.
My environment had changed from vibrant to grey in one night. There was nothing gradual about the transformation. Gone are the magical colours that were prevalent the day before. How could everything change so suddenly? How could my mood shift so quickly? Easy because grey means dull to me. My association with grey is to want to stay indoors in my pyjamas and do nothing. But I have two children so that was not about to happen. I had to talk myself out of being grey and find something that would pick me up again.
Decision made. Our daughter wanted to do a horse riding lesson. After some checking around, we found a stable in Morristown where she could do a lesson. Once we got there she was ecstatic when she saw she would be riding a white Shetland pony called Dusty. She didn’t want us to watch her lesson so my husband, son and I went to the Glen Moss Falls to walk and look at the falls. As we entered the little park, my husband pointed out impressive beaver dams and then we noticed the trees the beavers had been gnawing on to build their dams. It was totally unbelievable to see the destruction created by little beavers. Large trees destroyed and keeling over. Gnawed at their trunks. Left as territorial reminders that this was beaver land.
"How do they carry them?" my son asked.
Then we saw signs of where they dragged them across the ground to build their dams. Their tenacity left us speechless.
We walked on and though I was terrified, I climbed to the top of what to others would seem like a little hill but to me a mountain and there before us was the beautiful sight of Glen Moss Falls in its full glory. I had to hold on to the tree behind me to steady myself so I would not feel the pull of the ground below. I conquered my fear by standing at the top of the mound overlooking this majestic fall. And I was immensely proud of myself because on that grey day I needed something to make me feel accomplished and the climb provided me with just that particularly after being rewarded by the beautiful sight of the Falls.
The climb back down was slightly easier as long as my husband was in front of me. The closer we got to the bottom the better I felt. And when we got to the bottom of the hill and I looked back up at the top of the hill I was so proud of myself for facing my fear. And then the magic set in again as the greyness gave way to the golden sunlight streaming through the barren trees. Gold once again became the colour of the day. My mood lifted and I felt so much better because I had faced my fear, colours came flooding back in and my outlook for the day changed completely. The power of the mind never ceases to amaze me.

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