Holi

Today, I experienced joy. Joy in the form of powdery colors raining down from the hands of both friends and complete strangers, all different races and nationalities. There was nothing weird about walking up to someone you'd never met and attacking them with color, rubbing it into their hair or clothes or, even better, their face. One random guy wanted to take a picture with me, and we were laughing and smearing color all over each others faces while it was taken. I don't even know his name or what he looks like without a rainbow face, but I'm glad I got to share that moment of silliness and laughter with him.

Who knew that something so simple as a couple hundred people in a big field with plastic bags full of colored powder could be so incredibly fun? For those few hours things like race and skin color didn't matter, and even if they had, those slight discrepancies in pigment were totally covered up with the vibrant colors of pink, orange, green, and yellow! We were just a group of people celebrating beauty and life and dancing around in a field together.

And this joy and sense of unity didn't end when we left the field. The rest of the day we proudly flaunted the oddity of being completely covered in random colors, waving at everyone we passed, trying to make them smile, and more often than not succeeding. Today was just so beautiful in so many ways. No one cared about how they looked, because in a few seconds someone would inevitably come to spread green powder all over their face. When a newcomer was spotted, with their bright white, clean shirt, we all shouted, “Fresh meat!” And swarmed them until they were sufficiently colorful. I've never seen so much happiness, so many smiles and so much laughter over something so simple.

We need more holidays like this. Days for dancing in fields out in the sun, no inhibitions, not a care in the world, just beauty and joy and laughter and celebration.