what colour is your parachute?

A wound is never silent. It may trick you into thinking it has no soundbite. It may even be pushed down so deeply that it's voice seems disconnected to the impact it makes on our personal choices, decisions and actions. We don't see the link. We don't see how a few untreated wounds can affect everything from how we structure our daily routines to how we interact with others. And yet, we often don't see the connection. Our behaviour and reactions seem randomly tied to our personalities...........our temperments...........our way of seeing the world.

Wounds are comprised of hurts, slights, digs, abuse, failures..........they are smeared in shame and bruising pain which sometimes is just too tender even to the gentlest of touches. So, we build up the armour of anger to protect ourselves from recognizing the wound, from addressing it with the salve needed. We don't resolve or accept the reasoning behind the wound. It's like we are forced into a holding pattern of arrested development. Anger constipates personal growth.


Interesting how many colours anger comes in. We are all aware of the explosive red pot boiling kind that may even be directed at you because you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Senseless violence like random shootings is the blatantly aggressive code red anger. It's the pressure cooker type that simmers and simmers, fed by revengeful distorted thinking. Red anger is an outward aggressive display, which to a bystander or an intended victim can seem to be erupt out of nowhere until hindsight offered.

When anger, the frontman of a wound, seeps out a in shades of blue...........the blues..................it looks like sadness. It looks lost. It sounds like a misguided wail fading to a midnight black and blue solo saxophone. It's where shadows stretch over rapture, choking out the possible streaks of lightness. Blue anger is swallowed bitters which expands inside our souls leaving a bloated saturated feel like you've eaten too much junkfood at a party you weren't invited to and no one cared.

Green anger can lead to growth if the fear of change doesn't beat it out of you. It has the capacity to lead to a transformative enlightenment......the key is to grab onto it when it's germinating because it can easily turn into a different shade of green that simply oozes out of the wound, causing further hurt.


We arent very good at using our anger as a positive motivator. We aren't very good at knowing when to transplant the seedling into a place where it receives the sun and nourishment it needs to grow into a robust mature plant with roots fed by optimism. I wonder if its because we tend to allow the colours to bleed together to form a thorned wall of revenge instead of as a separate flower amongst the meadow of possibilities?

Wounds run deep. They never run still. It takes insightful courage to heal them and not to let them take hold of the choices you make or the hearts you can hurt by the protective thorns grown in defense.

Isn't life complicated?