“Too” Colored Glasses

Today’s word is TOO. 

Because I’m writing this from Arizona, you might think I’ll say:
It’s too hot.  

That’s a good guess, because I’ve been known to say: “It’s been too hot for too long, too soon in the year, with too many months to go until it’s not too hot anymore.”

But that’s not my point today. 

My point is: Too is the ultimate judgment word. It means the same as these fancy words: excessively, overly, immoderately, unreasonably, ridiculously, extremely. 

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Note of interest: Growing up in Harmony, Minnesota in the late ‘60s, it became our local slang to say “TOO POOR” when we judged something as being very good—”We won the basketball game. TOO POOR!”; and “TOO GOOD” when something was horrible—like rain on the big Harmony 4th of July parade. We thought we were clever to invent language, but I don’t think these phrases ever caught on nationally. 

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THE WORD TOO is the opposite of JUST RIGHT or PERFECT and it’s used when we’ve got our TOO COLORED GLASSES on. We use it when we find ourselves judging someone or something. (if you’re an editor or proofreader, you wear these glasses at work and it’s hard to take them off.)

Here’s what I’ve noticed lately.

Because it’s too hot outside, Ross and I walk in the mall each evening, where it’s too crowded. (I guess we can’t have it all!) In our two plus mile walk, navigating the mixture of shoppers who amble along in groups,  the word too pops up in my head about 1000 times. 

Too skinny

Too short

Too tight

Too lumpy

Too skimpy

Too many clothes

Socks, no shoes. Really?

Too much ink 

Too many walking abreast 

Too slowly

The list goes on.

The only perfect bodies I see are the mannequins in the windows…. and even they are too plastic with too little flexibility to look really good. 

At this point, I see my own reflection in the window and I think about my own body that is TOO on many levels. Perhaps maybe, just maybe, I’m too hard of everyone else because I’m too hard on myself. 

If BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder, then the CHANGE in attitude can only come from me, and if I’m willing, it can happen in a micro-second. 

When I decide that my “TOO colored classes” blind me to any joy or beauty of the night, things change. When I take them off, I’m free to count the Beauty of:

The cool temperature

The energy that comes from being around other people

The variety of displays in the shop windows

The smells of the food

The antics of the dogs

The aroma of the perfume 

The colors of the clothing

The humor in the t-shirt sayings

The time for conversation

The calories earned with each step

The proximity of such a place to our home

The lights, escalators …. and on and on.

Once gratitude and joy enter my vision, I can’t stop. That’s the person I’d rather live with inside my body—imperfect as it is. 

Maybe the unrelenting Arizona heat (or your own TOO weather) is partly to blame for the NEGATIVE attitudes that creep into our lives; yet no matter what or where, how hot or cold, the filter we use to COLOR our vision determines the quality of our human experience—each and every day.