Color Me American
Americans are Crayons? I don't think so. We're Colored Pencils.
ART finds us to perpetuate itself. Humans create ART to live forever.
Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication. What exactly does that mean in this landscape of pre-apocalyptic dystopia? What does CSW do that readers need to support? What trade-offs of time do you make for me and the words that fall out of my head?
How do those words impact your life and what is the plus in your life for the time you spend with me? CSW for me is my ship. Not to carry cargo, but to convey concepts. I’ve led a life vastly different than most people I know. My career choices (using the word lightly) have afforded me opportunities to connect with over 15,000 people in face-to-face interactions concerning intimate aspects of their lives - food and finances. I know people, and that helps me know myself. And my readers I believe.
I’ve been in situations, circumstances, and incidents that make most people cringe. I’ve been as high as a kite and as low as a yellow-bellied snake. I ascended to the penthouse only to end up in the outhouse. I’ve cooked for celebrities in Beverly Hills and convicts in Folsom State Prison. I’ve worked in Presidential and prison libraries alike.
I’ve wrecked every car I’ve ever owned (like 25+), had three kids in three decades, and earned paychecks for over 45 years, but never for more than 10 in the same place. I’ve toiled at world-class venues and no-name dives. I’ve earned the confidence of A-listers, rock stars, politicians, janitors, executives, Scientologists, murderers, rapists, and carjackers. And pretty much all of us in between.
And here I stand, no worse for the wear! Yeah, at least I still believe in us. Like my mom always says to us siblings “see, you all turned out normal.” Yeah, thanks mom. We sure did. We all did. It’s about time we appreciated that. I talk about how good people are.
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Pencils have backbone. Colored pencils have personality. Crayons get dull and melt. ART is my 3rd Element of Life that creates culture. ART imparts and impacts on us at an early age at the moment we experience it. We don’t know what we like until we like it. And then we like it forever.
America is like a Box of Crayons melts when the 64-boxer is left in the car by a neglectful parent. That sucks, right? America is a Melting Pot, and the analogy is apropos, as the opening paragraphs eloquently express. I was six when they debuted.
The 64-count Crayola crayon box was introduced in 1958 and here we are, ready to color the world, sometimes staying in the lines.
Look at us in that box, we start out in nice, orderly rows, each of us with a sharp, colorful tip, unbroken and ready to fulfill our life’s mission. We are all wrapped in a new paper cover that proclaims our color.
The colors of all peoples are there: brown, white, black, yellow and red.
We exist side-by-side with a single goal, to color the world beautiful. Adults can do it, the disabled can do it, adolescents can do it, children can do it, and repentant sinners can do it. Even reformed politicians and backsliding tele-evangelists can do it.
The 64-count Crayola box is normally a congenial, democratic place, but it has its moments and issues.
And then human nature takes over, and we become dull, blunt, broken, melted, used up, and finally, discarded. Maybe some relics survive the fridge gallery, but most do not. For that reason alone, I believe Americans are more like a collection of colored pencils.
Supporting my brilliant analogy is an amazing article by hi-school Art Teacher Tiffany. She sounds incredible. Mainly because she understands human nature, which is extremely raw in adolescence. She artfully articulates that advertence. She sets achievable and actionable goals by asking this question
But how do we rally the entire group to focus on one goal – excellent productivity – no matter the class make-up – beginners, intermediate, advanced, into it, suffering through it, stuck in it, don’t give a crap….?
Colored Pencils Art: What Colored Pencils and Student Behavior Have in Common
And then she answers it right after the lesson. And explains why so many things go so off-track for so many teenagers. Not to mention all of us - frustration is the friction I write about that derails our best of intentions. If it’s not easy, it’s not done.
Remember, our goal is success for all students. Not just the few who walk in, get it right away, and make the rest of the kids feel inadequate or untalented. Colored pencil is very unforgiving. If we don’t progress slowly we will have a very frustrated majority of students, and frustration can lead to negativity and this will often lead to apathy and chaos.
ART is simultaneously uniting and dividing. Two people can view the same ART together and have completely opposite reactions. Put us in a group setting, and tribes will form around loving it or hating it. But we are all reacting to it. To ART.
What we’re actually reacting to is an evolutionary emotional trigger - not exclusively childhood trauma - but something much deeper. Our collective trauma of the chaotic and often violent history of humanity. I know a bit about childhood trauma, and the resulting intergenerational trauma is more hereditary than blue eyes and blonde hair.
I’ve always felt that my childhood equipped me with a survival skill-set and leadership capabilities others my age never had. And still don’t to this day. I’m endlessly fascinated by life-stories of stability. Of one house and one school and one mate and one job for a lifetime. That’s a Disney-Dream. Just not real to me.
I’ve found much growth in awareness. Indeed, awareness is merely the first step. The second step for me was public declaration that I refuse to continue to live in trauma. The third step on my path was to confront the trigger and transform it. After that, it’s just one foot in front of the other. I say name your demon, not slay your demon. Read about that here.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is an experience or event that overwhelms your capacity to depend upon or protect yourself. While much of the trauma that we think about is acute trauma or one-time trauma, like car accidents, a lot of the trauma that we experience is repeated trauma(?). There is a specific set of feedback to acute this traumatic problem to treat us survive and accelerate us up for fight. But with continuous trauma, our brains and bodies don’t adjust to accelerate up. On the contrary, the target shifts to Coverage: how can I clothe my atmosphere, so I don’t experience this overwhelming state day after day. And this efficiency and repetition of protection become our way of living in the world—it becomes our personality. It becomes the way we lead. But it’s not just our self-regulation and mood that are impacted. It’s also, and perhaps even more, our trust and belief in relationships. Whereas many sharp traumas are misfortune and misadventure, most repeated traumas are relational Calamity— the illusion of people Carry out brutality and fright upon other crowd— that is what conflict is, that is what child abuse is, that is what domestic violence is.
That comes from an excellent research piece The Nexus between Childhood Trauma and the Emergence of Leadership. It’s a burgeoning part in the field of inquiry of psychology known as Leadership Development. I’m Exhibit A in the case study of life - both for acute trauma and for relational calamity.
I’d like to think intergenerational trauma stopped at me for my progeny, but sadly no. I have high hopes that it will stop with them, and in fact, my grandchildren seem to be living proof. Time will tell as it also heals, and passes faster than we realize.
But on the flip side, and in line with the research, those same traumas do not always have negative life repercussions. My life alone proves that anecdotally, as the three adults carrying my genes have grown into accomplished leaders in their own right.
Granted, small sample size, but not isolated. I’m sure that you know many stories that prove the same point. And now, the phenomenon has been found worthy of study. In a Conceptual Analysis article in frontiers - Collective Traumas and the Development of Leader Values: A Currently Omitted, but Increasingly Urgent, Research Area - I learned many new things.
It deals with collective trauma and leader values, and the theoretical framework of how those values are created and transmitted to successive generations. It only stands to reason that if the negative effects of trauma CAN be passed on, then so CAN the positive effects. Ok, what the hell - positive effects of trauma?
Well yeah, there are some. As discovered during research and posited thusly
a model that explains how the transmission of collective trauma repositories can shape certain leader values as proposed by our research: resilience, forgiveness, empathy, justice, and perseverance.
Think of the opposite meanings of each of those values. A collection of misery, right? Inadequacy, retribution, vindictiveness, prejudice, doubt. Constant companions to many trauma survivors, but also the building blocks for their positive antonyms. And the way to forge forward.
In great follow-up to their 2019 study, the authors put out a concise piece that lays it out directly. It defines those leader values and puts them in action. It crystalizes concepts into concrete coaction.
How Leadership Can Emerge From the Trauma of History
Compounding collective trauma are other forms of trauma humans suffer. I’ve suffered a few, some self-inflicted, others animal-inflicted, still others completely rando, like the time I got hit by a pickup truck and lived. But there’s also the the big three: Domestic Violence. Sexual Abuse. Emotional Manipulation.
Each tier of trauma contains an entire ecosystem of collateral damage, for lack of a better term. One trauma feeds another, and codependency constrains completeness. If one violation breeds a dozen recriminations, then the survivors sink in a sea of shame. With guilt the life preserver and retaliation the lifeboat.
So wow - trauma, colored pencils, and leadership. Is this where you thought we’d end up when it all started? Join the club, that’s a feeling I’ve had most of my life. Never knowing where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing or who I will be living with for so many years had a profound effect on my outlook on life.
For me, trauma made me almost immune to exterior stimuli. I accepted what others said and did, but still ran my own program. Because of the always shifting and never stable authority in my life, when someone attempted to exert control over me, it was a hard Fuck No! Parents, teachers, cops, bosses, significant others.
I think that is where my colored pencil metaphor comes from. To be a crayon, to me, is to be soft and squishy. To be a colored pencil, to me, is to have a solid inner strength. The variety of colors that symbolize that inner strength is yet another apt analogy. Many of my adolescent friends are those colored pencils in my life - all kinda the same but we all make a totally different impact on the canvas of life.
Like a career-coach connecting previous duties to future opportunities, a chaos-coach correlates past trauma to present outcomes. See how I open those doors to you, my loyal readers? Look to the past to build strength. Forget the past that demands weakness.
For me, identifying leadership traits and values in myself took forever. Others seemed to recognize it, and I tumbled up through-out my professional career. But I always felt like it was a house of cards ready to be blown over.
Covid afforded many opportunities - positive and negative. Death and isolation among the most painful, but many more adverse outcomes. It seems as if it attacked every weakness in human society - physical, emotional, and spiritual. It was a collective time of suffering.
But now, if one has not looked deep inside to discover the weakness at the core of our being, whatever that weakness is, we’re compounding it. We’re multiplying the weakness. Once you do look inside, you’ve put yourself on the track back.
That’s the colored pencil metaphor. Sharpen yourself. Bring out the best from inside of you. Recognize your importance to the final piece of ART. Sometimes we’re the artist. Other times, we’re the tool of the artist. I like being the best at both.
I’m cooking chicken on a Sunday night in America. I made it. So did you.
With much love,
Ric
Of course I found a playlist called Colored Pencils. Before we know it, we’ll be mind-melding music to each other. I can’t wait.
Links:
Crayola Products & Inspiration
Colored Pencil Society of America (CPSA)
Veronica Winters Painting
This is an interesting description of Americanism. I never thought a box of crayons to be the thing that illustrate our country. But the way you put it makes sense, ric-
We r formed by our experiences but only we dictate our future.