White is the symbol of purity and simplicity. When my baby was born, I had to have everything white. Furniture, bed linen, clothes, all white. It felt so pure.
A simple, crisp white shirt always works. Oh… but don’t eat spaghetti bolognese while wearing it. It does have its downside. It can get blemished easily. That’s ok, we still love it.
Every colour has an upside and downside.
The major benefit with white is its flexibility. It’s ability to adapt and shape things around it. To let others sit nicely with it.
Being flexible is more than admirable; it’s a highly sought-after human trait. Mentally and physically, it allows you to do more. To bend a bit further, stretch a bit deeper.
It’s just like life itself really. The ability to bend and shape your life and have flexibility in your thinking.
To shape your future, start with a clean, white canvas. Start adding ideas, thoughts, colours. Amazing what you’ll come up with.
In paint, the colour white is the absence of all colour. You can’t mix a bunch of colours to create white. One could argue it is the absence of all ideas, but I would argue that in fact it allows for awareness to flow, to be enhanced. For pure creativity.
It’s hard to do this though, to start fresh with a clean slate, realising it will eventually get blemishes. That’s ok. Like eating messy pasta, it’s worth it.
Perhaps we need white thinking to encourage new ideas and merge old ones. To shape our future and allow new colours to sit comfortably in the palette.