It starts when we are children. We take a box of 64 crayons and separate them by color.
We insist we keep individual sections for reds, blues, greens, metallics and so on because they look good together. We become color oriented.
We arrange the clothes in our closets by color and dress by color as well.
The same is true in the parking lot. At a university such as La Verne, where parking is limited, color loses its priority.
However, in an open parking lot where people can choose to park wherever they want, we can easily see how color oriented our society really is. Every color has its place.
Just like a box of crayons, the cars are parked according to color. A row of blues here. A pair of browns there. It looks like a dealership, but it’s not. It is reality.
People receive some sort of satisfaction from matching their cars with others. And when our color is not available, we choose to park next to similar makes or models. We play vehicular Uno.
Can we trust someone who drives “our” car or likes “our” color? Will our cars be safer if we buddy up with another like us?
The answer is no. Draw four.
We are in a parking lot. Who is to say that while we are away, the matching cars next to us won’t leave, to be replaced by ones that clash? The arrangement is ruined, and we must face the fact that there are other colors and kinds besides our own.
Even children who do not understand the concept of cleaning up after themselves or who eat as if they had never been taught manners see to it that their crayons stay arranged in a well thought out color-coded system. They insist their crayons be put back in the proper spot.
And for what? To keep track of the cornflower blue? There is no point. The crayons didn’t come that way. We did it ourselves.
Dump the crayons out. Mix them up a little. Let the colors touch each other. It takes all the stress out of separating them, when they end up uniting on the same piece of paper anyway.
Life is too short to spend so much time making a fuss over colored crayons. Coloring is supposed to be a fun activity.
And in the parking lot, we should not concern ourselves so much with who we park next to.
We make too many judgements based solely on what we see. We allow our eyes to decide whether or not our car is safe, without knowing anything about the person the car actually belongs to.
The segregation that occurs in the parking lot does not prevent auto theft. It does not stop rapes or murders.
How can anyone bother with color-coding their section of the parking lot when the lot is so filthy?
If only people would let go of their inhibitions to park near like colors, we would be taking a step in the right direction. We could have better, safer, cleaner parking lots.
While the ocean is blue, the earth is brown and the grass is green. They touch each other and seem to compliment each other just fine. The colors make the world a more beautiful place to look at.
Colors should be appreciated rather than feared or avoided. Choices should not be color-based.
Sometimes it can be difficult to teach little children the art of matching. They do not grasp the concept of colors clashing or patterns contrasting. It all looks good to them.
We teach them to match, which progresses to more harmful things. They obsess over crayons, the arrangement of clothes in their closets, where they park and the people they meet.
Little do they know that the reds, the yellows, the blacks, the whites and browns all go well together.
