“If I were a bird,” she thought, “I would fling myself from limb to limb. The breeze would take away all the weight of being, and I would feel alive.”

“If I were her,” thought the bird, I would change out of my yellow dress and lie, pillowed, comforted, and still.”

It’s so easy to see what we think the “others” have. It takes a special effort sometimes to see it in ourselves.

Yesterday, I took two hours to hand paint a single bookmark. As the woman was coming to life on the paper, she looked so familiar. Someone I knew? I couldn’t quite place her. As I cut her, tasseled her, gave her a sleeve, I saw it — the yellow bird painting. She was the yellow bird. And that’s when I heard their voices.

I’ve heard those voices before. In my head. The ones that compare, Oh, the French do this, or the Americans have that… and I can get lost in this battle of others. It’s so ridiculous, and never makes me happy. I’ve seen people do it online, comparing their lives to the manufactured world of social media. Ugh. But it seemed so simple, when I saw the yellow birds, the yellow-dressed woman — we all have everything we need, we just have to see it. To live it — live our best yellow. When I want to fly, I must fly. When I need to rest, I can rest. There are no “ifs,” there is only YELLOW! And when comparison tries to whisper in my ear, you don’t belong here, you’d be better off somewhere else, I simply fluff my winged dress and say, “Oh, but it IS my place!”