People are like crayons...

A while back I sat at my Aunt Lindas dining room table coloring with her three year old son Landen.  Despite his insistent demands to use his sister Savannahs markers I brought him a tattered and torn yellow box half filled with crayons and his favorite Micky Mouse coloring book.  We flipped through the pages until he found a picture he liked (Donald Duck playing baseball in case you're curious), and then set to creating our masterpiece.

After watching him purposely pick out the smallest crayons and then get frustrated when they slipped through his little fingers I was admittedly slightly curious about his reasoning.  So, I asked him why he didn't want to use the nicer, obviously unused ones like Spring Green or Sepia.
"Because Cheryl," he stated seriously, "Those are the ugly ones and they will make the picture all yucky!"
While the color palette of a toddler is far from extensive it's still hard to argue with his simple logic.

When it comes to crayons the wrapper matches what's on the inside so you always know what you're about to get, unfortunately people are never quite that simple.  Far too often in life we envy those who  appear to be Blues or Reds on the outside only to discover that where it matters they are actually closer to Grays.  On the same hand it's easier to dismiss those with far less attractive exteriors than it is to peel back their layers (like an onion! as Shrek would say) and see what's underneath.  After all, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian make for a much nicer picture than Mother Teresa and Ghandi.

Life is hard on most of us and sometimes it feels like the more you try to put into the world the more it takes from you.  There will always be days when the universe feels like a toddler playing with crayons, using up those of us with the most to give leaving us broken and less than we were because it sometimes forgets to be gentle with those it likes the best. 

So, instead of feeling sorry for yourself the next time you pass a supermodel remember that people are seldom what they appear to be and that it takes every color under the rainbow to make the most stunning masterpieces no matter how much paint -or wax- you have to spill in the process!