re·​fram·​ing, 5

I wonder why Stop signs are hexagons but the more universal Stop icon is a square. A black square with no border - apply a negative effect and see its infinity. Did it vanish for you? A white form against a white backdrop, disappearing like a face in a crowd, a Representative in the House, a comment on the internet.

What if it's printed out and pasted on the gallery wall: the world's least informative poster. Would it reflect the light from a nearby fixture, borrowing color to make something more of itself. Would you consider that resourceful or fraudulent? Do we need to give credit when using a resource that has no quantity, like encouragement, inspiration, or knowledge? Does your level of ownership lessen over lessons you've learned from a friend, as opposed to those you "found on your own" (like through an article or podcast)? Can we ever lay claim to any piece of knowledge if nothing is new under the sun? How can we know that someone across the world didn't already write the same line, conjure the same idea, or make the same deduction while peering through a microscope?

If I stand in the gallery, right in front of the black stop symbol poster, maybe I could see my eyes looking back at me. My vision incepting in its own reflection, enabled by a symbol of disablement, to the point where I'm somehow inside it. Could I rip it apart from the inside, pressing against its interior like Samson, terrified and furious, crumbling its dictates of inhibition?

Could I walk away from it then, stepping towards a more playful, more open life where thoughts were not caverns and decisions were not brambles? Where I didn't second guess the way I exist with people, the choices I've made. Or would I lose myself inside, a martyr for the doctrine of liberation? Is that the hill I want to die on? My gut says no.

So maybe I sneak a bit of white paint and a square-tipped brush into the gallery, and I draw a thick line down the center of the pastey poster. It would gently ask me to pause for a moment - to think, "Gut check - how am I doing? Let's keep up the honesty and buoyancy, my love." Maybe then I could keep walking along, observing the other posters and the paintings of flowers in vases and of children at parks, thinking about the magic of color and how handy it is that we have the same number of hours in the day today and tomorrow as we did on the best day of our life.