Some Days Are Elephants

My down time has been invaded by elephants this past week. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I read Jodi Picoult's latest novel Leaving Time. For me, there is so much that is so satisfying in a Jodi Picoult novel. She always writes in the gray. Nothing is black or white. Her novel Leaving Time is about loss and grief and elephants. Yes, elephants.

Now I am reading a book in a different genre. It is a book by Letitia Sweitzer titled Elephant in the ADHD Room. The elephant connect was totally random, if you believe in totally random.

I have elephants on my mind.  I have been thinking about elephants, talking about elephants, even googling elephants. Someone I know is traveling to Malaysia.  The first thing that came to mind is that he would probably be seeing elephants.

So naturally, I was thinking about one of my favorite cartoons.

"Elephant in the room" implies that an obvious problem or situation is being ignored. Or that people do not want to acknowledge it. Much like the situations leading to events in Ferguson and other cities in our nation.

While we all may not agree on the nature of this elephant, many of us are acknowledging there is an elephant, an enormous elephant in fact. It is walking down America's streets and entering our conversations, too big to be ignored. At the very least, we need to respect its size. And its color. Elephants are always gray, never black or white.