Hooked on Gray

Look around on your daily journeys and notice the profusion of the color gray. Why so many gray cars now, why so many new houses painted gray, and older houses repainted in the drab color? Why so many gray vinal plank floors and gray walls and even gray refrigerators in new houses?

In The Rainbow Oracle, a book I co-authored with Tony Grosso many years ago, we defined gray as a word that symbolized confusion, disorientation, depression, a lack of understanding. Gray has been cast in such undertones for centuries. In fact, it can be seen in Homer’s The Illiad and the Odessey, believed written in the eighth century B.C., and considered the oldest known example of Western literature. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is searching for a way back home to Ithaca but he is enmeshed in gray-colored confusion as one event after another work against him.

In an article in the Internet Public Library,  the writer notes the gray coloring of The Odyssey and then jumps to the year 2000 superhero movie, Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson where gray appears in multiple scenes. For example, gray dominates as David, the man who survived a train crash in which everyone else died, walks away from the hospital. He has plenty of reason to feel confused and disoriented as he searches to discover his destiny.

But beyond literature and movies, why are we seeing gray everywhere? Why do gray cars attract attention more than say silver cars? Could it be a sign of the times we are living in? A time in which there is great confusion and divide among people as to the very nature of our reality. How could so many people believe things that don’t make sense to so many other people?

Trish would be happy to tell you which side is right and which is stupid and uninformed but that’s not my point. I’m more interested here in the overview of confusion and disorientation that prevails when we have to watch what we say to both friends and strangers about certain subjects because there’s a chance that they believe the opposite of what you might say.

So we paint our lives in gray, the popular color of the day. But maybe it’s time to rebel against that color scheme and wave a silver banner. Some realtors and designers and others who deal with colored products have recognized that gray is dreary, not exciting, and its predominance in their industries make it feel as if gray is the color of fascism. So maybe it’s time to repaint out lives going forward into 2024, and go against the tide in a year that is likely to herald all that is gray in the political and social worlds.