Socrates is credited for saying to
understand a thing, you must first name it. In his way of reasoning, how a word is used
and what justifies its use are different questions that need to be defined. I embrace that one of the practices to obtain authenticity
is unbiased processing. Unbiased
processing being the absence of reconstructing facts to fit a favored notion. Along
with not rationalizing behavior to defend a preferred opinion of one self. Accepting flaws as well as strengths equally without
fear that negative aspects reflect on the value of one’s perceived self image
(being worthy, good, adequate). From
that point of view, I’d wish to translate what Socrates meant as that to
understand something one must be interested in the truth of its nature. Without the burden of making it fit a concept
of acceptable meaning. I mention all of
that to address a process that I compare to connecting the dots of personal
experience. For instance, when I was
just out of High School my peers and I would hang out in the local all night
diner and talk about a host of things. Most
I cannot recall, but one game we played was to assign a color to an emotion. 
“What color
is love?” Each of us would render our choice and then explain why we’d selected
that. The game would run the gambit of
our creative impulses into the late hours of the night.
“What color
is greed?” came up, and several were in agreement it’d be a hue of green since
greed was close to envy, jealousy and of course Greed and Green sounded so
close. I said, “Orange”
“Why Orange
Albert?”
When I was a kid my mom would
cut an orange in half, and then once more, making it into quarters as a treat
for us kids during summer. Now I'm a child from what is called a stair step
family; meaning there was only a year’s difference between my eldest sister and
my middle sister; and then again between her and I.
So
each of us would be given our slice, and we gobble it down as fast as we could
because it was a familiar practice between us to quibble and jostle for favor
in order to get the very last piece. The unspoken reward in doing this was whoever
was the quickest ,would then be first candidate for leftovers. This was the condition of anything offered to
us kids by our parents. Of course, that included whining and whimpering that
deserving was akin to quickness.
But along
with this rivalry was something we enjoyed doing with orange rinds in
particular. That was pressing the peels onto
our front teeth filling our mouths; then grin, it’d make us laugh so hard the
orange would fall out of our open mouths. We had so much fun doing that we’d
often forget the contest of to-the-firstest-goes-the-mostest. I’m thinking
now, why did we value the second piece so much when we could only really use
one? But like hungry birds, we just
wanted more for the sake of wanting more.
I take that as a
lesson in how we are, in our human experience. If given rise to rely on those
childish ways, what I often refer to as playground politics, we'll spend a lot
of energy trying to get something we really don't need, but contested for out
of principal of being first in order to hoard. Ironically so many of us grow up
thinking that’s a necessary tool as an adult too! More times than not, Mom would take the last
piece and play rind smile with us. Darn,
she out foxed our greed! So for me,
Greed would certainly be orange.
