2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
An interesting observation was told to me by one of my clients. She stood in a flight of stairs and spoke on the phone. Cracked paint on one of the stair railings caught her eye. She looked closely and saw many layers of paint. It turned out that there were seven of them, and they were all in a very interesting sequence. The paint changed color from dark to light with each new painting, the old color was always darker in relation to the new color.
I was struck by such an interesting observation. I suggested developing this theme and interpreting it for the client's present life. Firstly, I assumed that it could be a great art project (my client is an art person) if you take a separate cut of the railing in the company building where they are located, take a high-quality photo and place it at the main entrance or in the conference room. Having provided the photo with the history of the company and approximately in what year what color was on the railing, it would be possible to recreate the history of the company's development in colors and convey the feeling and direction of movement into a "bright" future. But seriously, on such a banal and ordinary thing you can see and understand how we ourselves live and where we are going.
The client was interested in the experience with the railings, and we went further. She decided to explore the area of "covering with layers" of the railings as a metaphor for how we take over some rules or life scenarios and strategies in our life and how they, lying on our native essence, cover it with a layer of paint, behind which there is no longer we can see ourselves. Each new layer of paint, each new form of our life, each new experience or just years of life also change us, just like painting. We are one, then another. What happens if you wipe off all the paint and get to its original state? Who knows? There is a possibility that the surface of the railing will remain slightly different from what it was 20 years ago. And then what? Sand with sandpaper and paint again with varnish? All over again?
It was also interesting to see the railings in this state as an object with which other people interact. For someone, such a railing is a valuable object of art, for someone it is just a support on the way up or down, someone disdains to touch them, because someone else has already touched them, someone does not notice them at all, but someone paints them! So everything resonates closely with people! The client was especially interested in the figure of the person who paints the railings. This is truly a separate person in the life of the railings and it depends on her what color they will shine in the new year. Who is this person? Does he paint the railings of his own free will? Who is a person in our life? Finding an analogy to this character is not so easy. Of course, we tend to think that this person is ourselves. Perhaps it is so. There is always someone who carries a can of paint and who has a paintbrush in hand.
And the fact how we ourselves interact with this railing says a lot about ourselves. How do we interact with the world?
I always really like such bright and unusual metaphors from everyday life. When you can be Alice in the looking glass for a minute and see “something” in front of you without any drug experience. I like such living and, perhaps, mystical things and their interpretations, and, most importantly, how all this helps clients understand something that is happening in their lives now. Through such seemingly unrelated things to us, you can understand a lot about yourself.
And on the railing it is impossible to understand whether it leads up or down.
