About 10 years ago, I opened a bottle of Fruitopia. Leaning on the edge of my desk, I twisted off the cap and glanced at the one-liner printed on the underside of the bottle lid. In simple, fixed-space font, it read: Is there enough purple in your life?
Alone in a stark, windowless office, I shook my head and offered the lid an audible confession, "No...There's not."
Thirst had serendipitously exposed a small but poignant tragedy. See, I love purple! If I really think about it, purple is my favorite color--its aesthetic appeal accented by its philosophical undercurrent. Purple is bold and undeniable. Even in its muted shades, purple leaves little room for timidity. It doesn't blend into the shadows or attempt neutrality. Purple is pretty much always purple--genuine and authentic and without apology.
But, as I toyed with the waxed-aluminum lid, I couldn't think of a single piece of clothing or personal affect that I owned in purple. Pondering the inconsistency, I supposed that when given the option, purple was easily deemed just a bit too bold, a little too intense for whatever purposes an item was destined. And, at the moment when deliberation turned to purchasing, I simply deferred my passion for the safety of pragmatics.
The otherwise benign marketing ploy gazed back at me, recasting my life as a study in subtle, chromatic cowardice. And so, as I sipped on the watered-down concoction of all-natural fruit flavors, I resolved to fill my world with a lot more purple. I suppose a juice lid is not the most sophisticated catalyst for personal epiphany. And, on the surface, the choice to include a little more purple in everyday life is cursory at best. But, perhaps what etched that moment firmly into my mind was that it marked a conscious commitment to authenticity.
I once heard someone remark that children are born knowing who they are, and we spend the next eighteen years trying to talk them out of it. Of course, authenticity is a tricky game. While we may have once possessed an untarnished sense of self, it quickly oxidizes into narcissism without the requisite addition of empathy and interdependence. And far too often, who we think we are, who we wish we were, and who we believe we should be make collateral damage of who we truly are.
The grand irony of our ongoing adolescences is that we often claim authenticity to avoid the very act. "I'm just not that kind of person. It's just not me, " we tell ourselves and whoever else will listen. Because, for some reason, being ourselves is scary. In those rare moments of stark honesty, perhaps we can admit that part of our fear stems from the realization that authenticity has a natural tendency to preclude excuses. We fear it will leave us holding the bag of our inevitable failures with nothing to blame but our personal lacking.
Its true, of course, but silly just the same. The irrationality of our fear is not that it miscalculates authenticity, but that it judges the whole on the merits of a single part. Our fear has built a case on a faulty assumption. Dare we ask, Who cares if we fail? Who cares if we are found wanting? When our actions and thoughts and words are genuine, at worst, we are guilty of unbridled humanity.
See, the truth is that there is no such thing as a pristine assent to untarnished accomplishment. There is no color that is both universally unoffensive and boldly individual. My favorite purple purse will inevitably clash with far more than it will compliment. But there in lies the beauty of being purple. Purple is bold and intense and unapologetically so.
