Drifting off to sleep last night,

I began to recall a time when I was walking down a corridor in a school

and I started to hear a teacher admonishing a child for painting the river in his picture the wrong colour.

“When have you ever seen a river that colour?’ she cried.

“…water is blue, not brown!

Do it again and make it blue this time!”

As I continued along the corridor I began to think about all the rivers I had seen

and realised that nearly every one of them had seemed brown of one shade or another

(mixed with hints of other colours and glints of light, of course).

I tried hard to recall if I’d ever seen a blue river

and to be honest I never had.

It reminded me of a time when as I child I stood by the sea with my Dad

and he gazed and pointed towards the horison and said with a puzzled tone,

“Where does it stop being sea and become sky?”

I peered closely and pointed to ‘the join’ to help him ‘make it out’.

“How do you know”, he said”

“Because the colour changes from dark grey to light grey” I said,

“… just there, see?”

(It did change from dark grey to light grey.)

“My teacher says the sky is blue but it’s not blue is it… look!” I told him.

” What colour do you see?” said my dad.

For the next week or so I noticed the sky and it’s changing colours

ranging from nearly black to nearly white,

with all the colours of the rainbow between.

And over the years I’ve noticed that British seas (and rivers) are almost never blue.

And back in the corridor I reflected on how our beliefs

and the conditioning we’re subject to from those around us

sometimes overrides, so easily,

what we can see clearly with our own eyes.

And as I continued to drift off to sleep,

I was glad to be reminded how important it can be

to encourage children to be aware of what they can see with their own eyes

and to know that their experience IS valid information.

That their data is NOT flawed.

And when they have faith in themselves to know what they see,

and to interpret the world from their own authentic experience

then they flourish

and we all learn something of value.