72. Valuation

Water


Wind

Artwork by:

Meg Vellejos-McCoy at innerlifecreations.com.

Day 90 of 2021 and Day 1947 of her Daily Painting Practice.

At what point do you re-assess value judgments?

Do you remember a time before you judged so harshly?

When that question came to mind, I thought of several instances where I judged others harshly. That value judgment had a degree of finality to it, though the path of opinion-based judgment is anything but direct.

Once there, once decided, it feels like I’ve always held that opinion. I double down and become invested in my own judgment.

Recognizing that a value judgment needs to be reassessed is like playing with a coloring book and crayons. If my favorite color is yellow and I open the coloring book to an outline of a flower, I may color the whole flower yellow. That’s easy, right?

It might be easy, but that’s rarely a depiction of how flowers really are. If I challenge myself to be more accurate, I might pick up a blue crayon and layer True Blue over the yellow of the stem and leaves, creating green. Perhaps I’ll add red — the color of passion — and lightly apply it to the petals of the blossom to reflect the orange I know the flower to truly be.

I challenge myself to reassess my value judgments when I recognize that they’re over-simplified. I seek the color of nuance and think again.