“It’s not easy being green.”
Jim Henson grew up in the green swamps of Mississippi. It’s no wonder Kermit the Frog was one of his first characters on “Sam and Friends” in 1955. It was the time Marty McFly went back to the future. It was the time of racial segregation in America. And Kermit the Frog felt it. “It’s not easy being green.” Kermit sang these words through Jim Henson the puppeteer.
Kermit faces the life struggle of being green. He doesn’t want to be an ordinary color blending in with ordinary things. He wants to stand out like the flashy sparkles in the water or the stars in the sky. His dream is to go to Hollywood and make a big success but he is so small. He is just a frog. Maybe Jim Henson felt the same way. At the time there were so many ordinary people finding ordinary jobs and living an ordinary life as baby boomers. Jim Henson must have felt like any ordinary person with no special talents. Maybe he didn’t like his squeaky voice. It’s not easy to be rejected or misunderstood. It’s not easy to tell your future parents-in-law that you play with puppets for a living. It wasn’t easy but today his voice is loved and remembered. His puppets created laughs and even tears for all “the lovers, the dreamers and me.”
When Jim Henson started Sam and Friends he took a great risk. He left the ordinary road to become a puppeteer. He looked to be an ordinary guy playing with sock puppets. He felt like Kermit when people pass him by because he does not stand out like so many beautiful things. But he did remain in despair. He found hope in green. Green is the color of new beginnings. When the snow melts away the grass changes green vibrant with life in the spring. Green is ordinary but familiar. Green makes us feel relaxed, cool and friendly. Green comes to our eye level. Our eyes need the color of green. Although it is so ordinary we need to look outside and see the green all around. Kermit is small but green doesn’t have to be small. In the beginning Jim Henson was a guy playing with sock puppets but he didn’t have to be small. He and his puppets became big like the oceans, important like the mountains and tall like the great oak tree. They reached out to millions of ordinary people. Celebrities joined them. The Muppet Show followed, “Woka, woka.” Then the Muppet movies. Jim Henson was creating a new media through the Muppets. His dreams and vision continued and this message was spread to the world: “It’s not easy being green.” And then it was time for the messenger to exit so that we could continue his message.
It’s not easy being green. Steemit seems to be blue like a whale but if you look carefully there is a lot of aqua green going on here. It is the color of the ocean alive. Most of us are green here. We really aren’t even minnows. We are more like plankton the feeding source of the ocean. We seem very ordinary and maybe untalented but we are what keeps this ocean going. We are the ones who bring our friends to Steemit and we are the ones who continue to post day by day. We are ordinary people and it is not easy being green. As we continue to post here we come to realize that just by doing our ordinary things we are great. People here introduce their neighborhoods or the food they like to cook. They write a song or a poem. It comes from ordinary life and ordinary struggles but here the ordinary takes on a new life. Green becomes the essence of the Steem Ocean. Steemit by no means is an ordinary community but a community where ordinary people become extraordinary.
It’s not easy being green.
But Steem on!!
Love,
365GROOVY
@mineopoly
