COLORFUL

This note is brought to you by Kandi with the keen interest and encouragement of the man who looked handsome today. His neatly combed hair, great tie that matched his shirt and infectious smile made me give him the compliment which in turn launched my very awesome and productive day and my long line of thoughts. Which I will get to in a second.

I have a phone with blemishes on its screen. They are not huge and significant, matter of fact anyone else can't see them but I do and they agitate me. You see ages ago I dropped my phone and had to have my screen replaced. The new screen cost me but at least it made my phone useable. The man who installed the new screen kept repeating, “Sizankala munshe phone iyi. Sister this phone will never be the same, you just have to get rid of it because no screen is like the original screen that comes with the phone.”

I heard him and I ignored him. I had a soft spot for my phone, it fit my hand perfectly and I had different covers for it to match my moods, no other phone would feel the same. So I stood there, braving the dust, heat and congestion of Lusaka town centre and waited for the man to give my baby a fixed face. When he returned with my phone, it was fixed but it wasn’t quite the same. It had blemishes. Tiny little dots that I see to this day. I tried to put one of those dark screen protectors on it so that I don’t see the dots. The dots disappeared but guess what else disappeared. The colour and brilliance of my screen quality. Something that tech savvy people would call screen resolution or something. My screen had no dots but it was also boringly dark with no great definition to the images I saw. I lived with it. I chose boredom over blemishes. And I chose boredom every single day because I didn’t want to see the blemishes and be reminded that I messed up my phone. This resulted in me hating my phone which I once so loved. Then I made up my mind to get rid of it.

That’s the backstory, so today I sat down and from nowhere the urge came to rip off the dark screen protector, and before I could remind myself of the blemishes I just did it, I ripped it off. In an instant I was exposed to my screen again. The dots are still there but I had forgotten how awesome my screen was and how everything was so much brighter and beautiful regardless of the dots. I even regretted covering it up and realised that I did my phone a disservice. Yes my phone has blemishes but my perception of it affected my feelings about it. This in turn made me remember the man I met in the morning. Handsome is his genetic disposition, whether I see it or not, or whether he covers it up or not, my perception is just altered every time he changes his haircut or wears green or blue.

There is probably a whole lot that I don’t see about myself and others either because of my flaws or theirs. Sometimes we wear a dark exterior or a quiet façade in the fear of acknowledging our blemishes. Sometimes we lay low when we should speak up, undermine ourselves because it is safer to be invisible. Sometimes the choice is either boredom or flaws. Perfect situations can be incredibly boring and offer little to no inspiration. I bet I am not the first to claim that flawed situations give a colourful insight that teaches, adds substance and can be a source of passion. So today I am taking the personal challenge to rip off the dark covers that stop me from seeing things as they really are even if the result isn’t completely pleasing. I hope the result is more beauty, because maybe perfection is flawed.

I’d explain this further but nah, let he who has ears hear, and he who has eyes see.