Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world.

Host: The morning sun spilled through the wide windows of a small art studio, its light stretching across half-finished canvases and jars filled with brushes that looked like weary soldiers after a long campaign. The air smelled faintly of turpentine, coffee, and the sharp sweetness of paint — the scent of creation, or maybe, redemption.

Outside, the city was waking — horns, chatter, the shuffle of a thousand separate lives brushing against each other like strokes on a single, unintentional canvas.

Inside, at the far end of the room, Jack sat hunched over a canvas, a cigarette balanced between his lips, its ash long and threatening collapse. His hands — streaked with reds, yellows, and stubborn gray — trembled slightly, as if unsure of their own intention. Across from him, Jeeny leaned against a wooden easel, her small frame illuminated by sunlight and the colors it scattered.

Jeeny: “Allen Klein once said, ‘Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.’”

Jack: snorts softly “That’s cute. A little too Hallmark for me.”

Jeeny: smiling faintly “Maybe. But sometimes the simplest truths sound like clichés because we’ve stopped believing them.”

Jack: sets the brush down, exhales “Or because they’re naïve. You can’t just color over despair like it’s a bad sketch.”

Jeeny: “Maybe not. But you can decide what palette you want to live in.”

Jack: “You’re telling me pain’s optional now?”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. I’m saying interpretation is.”

Host: A streak of sunlight cut across Jack’s canvas — a landscape in muted tones of gray, blue, and charcoal. A sky without a sunrise. A horizon without hope. It looked like the world before forgiveness.

Jeeny walked over, eyes scanning the painting with both tenderness and quiet sadness.

Jeeny: “It’s beautiful.”

Jack: shrugs “It’s honest.”

Jeeny: “Honest isn’t the same as complete.”

Jack: glances at her “You think life’s missing color? Or I am?”

Jeeny: gently “You keep painting your world in grayscale and then wonder why it feels heavy.”

Jack: “It’s not about how it feels. It’s about how it is. The world doesn’t hand out bright colors, Jeeny. It’s concrete and smoke and bills and loneliness.”

Jeeny: smiling softly “Then maybe you have to be your own source of color.”

Jack: scoffs “What does that even mean?”

Jeeny: “It means the world gives you gray — but you choose what you do with it. You can curse it… or you can laugh at it.”

Jack: smirking “Laugh at the apocalypse. You’d make a great nihilist.”

Jeeny: grinning “I’m not a nihilist. I’m a believer in absurd hope.”

Host: The sunlight shifted, landing now on Jeeny’s face. Her eyes, deep brown and calm, caught a glimmer that was more reflection than light — like she’d learned to find brightness in places it didn’t belong.

Jack turned back to his canvas, dipped the brush into the gray again, then hesitated.

Jack: “You know, humor feels like betrayal sometimes. Like laughing while the world’s burning.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s oxygen while you’re trapped in the smoke.”

Jack: pauses, thinking “You really think laughter can fix anything?”

Jeeny: “Not fix. Illuminate. Like a spark in a blackout. It doesn’t erase the dark — it just reminds you you’re still there.”

Jack: quietly “Still there…”

Jeeny: “Still capable of feeling light.”

Host: A pigeon landed on the windowsill, cooing softly — a sound too ordinary for such a sacred stillness. Jack glanced up, and for a moment, even he smiled.

Jack: “You sound like one of those motivational posters. ‘Choose joy.’”

Jeeny: teasing “And you sound like a moody painter who forgot that blue can mean sky too, not just sorrow.”

Jack: smiles faintly “Touché.”

Jeeny: “You don’t have to fake happiness, Jack. Just make room for it. Like blending yellow into gray — you don’t lose the shadow; you just give it warmth.”

Jack: “You talk like a painter.”

Jeeny: “No, I talk like someone who’s tired of living in grayscale.”

Host: She walked over to the table where the paint jars were lined up — each labeled, some half-empty, others dried into forgotten colors. She opened one, the bright cadmium yellow catching the light like a sun in captivity.

She dipped a brush and, without asking, dragged a bold streak of yellow through the sky of Jack’s painting.

He tensed.

Jack: “What the hell are you doing?”

Jeeny: “Adding proof of life.”

Jack: glaring, then softening “You just ruined the composition.”

Jeeny: smiling “Maybe it needed to be ruined.”

Jack: “You can’t just paint over pain with optimism.”

Jeeny: “No, but you can paint through it.”

Host: The yellow cut across the gray like defiance — awkward, sudden, too alive for comfort. But as it dried, it began to change the whole tone of the piece. The darkness wasn’t erased. It was framed — dignified by contrast.

Jack stared at it, torn between annoyance and awe.

Jack: softly “It’s ugly.”

Jeeny: smiling “It’s honest.”

Jack: “Didn’t you just say honesty wasn’t enough?”

Jeeny: “Not when it’s only half of the truth. This is the other half.”

Jack: looking at her, voice low “You really think you can color away despair?”

Jeeny: “No. But I can remind you that despair isn’t the whole painting.”

Host: A shaft of light broke fully through the window now, spilling across both of them — Jack, smudged with gray, and Jeeny, glowing in defiant yellow. The air felt charged, as if something had shifted — not in the world, but in the way it was being seen.

Jack picked up his brush again. This time, he didn’t reach for gray.

Jack: “So what color’s humor, then?”

Jeeny: “It’s every color that refuses to give up.”

Jack: grinning faintly “So — yellow, then.”

Jeeny: “Yellow, and red, and every shade of hope people forgot how to mix.”

Jack: “You make it sound like laughter’s sacred.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it is. The world’s too dark not to laugh sometimes.”

Host: He dipped his brush again — this time into something brighter, warmer. He started adding streaks of red, hints of gold, subtle blues where before there had been none. Each stroke felt like breath — uneven, unsteady, but real.

The room seemed lighter, too — not from the sun, but from choice.

Jack: quietly “Maybe Allen Klein had a point.”

Jeeny: softly, almost smiling “He just reminded us we hold the crayons.”

Jack: “And we keep drawing the same storm.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time to paint the sunrise.”

Host: The canvas gleamed under the shifting light — no longer perfect, but alive. The gray still lingered, but it was no longer the whole story. Around it danced the beginnings of something brighter — not happiness, but possibility.

And as the colors began to blend, Jack laughed — not loudly, but deeply, the sound of something loosening inside him.

Host: The world outside was still gray — concrete, clouds, the rhythm of rain — but inside that little studio, color began to breathe again.

And somewhere between the laughter and the brushstrokes, the truth of Klein’s words settled like sunlight on fresh paint:

The world doesn’t hand you its colors.
You choose them — one tone, one smile, one act of defiance at a time.

And even in the darkest picture,
a single stroke of yellow
can still change
everything.