If you go shopping online or step into a gift-y store, you will see loads of objects that lift your spirits with positive messages and sweet art. Colorful images of flowers, sunsets or cute animals abound in this inspiring sector of the gift-giving world.
I love objects like that, and find that the properly displayed (or gifted) one can turn around a tough day.
But recently, I’m loving a different, more unlikely source of positivity—Truth Potato.
Truth Potato is a collection of drawings and sayings created by “a doodler” named Harsh Gopal, who is based in Balgalore, India. His main character is a potato with wide-set eyes who shares simple aphorisms that attempt to illuminate truths about modern life.
Some of these “truths” are uncomfortable, as when Truth Potato states, “We don’t have much control” or “Your friends will talk behind your back at times.” Somehow, though, attaching these statements to this brown, oblong, squat-footed potato makes it hard to dismiss them. They’re absurd in that context—and that makes me linger over them a moment longer than I normally would. It makes me confront the ways in which they’re true in my life, to think through my feelings about the things that challenge me.
Many, if not most, of Truth Potato’s sayings are reassuring, uplifting and positive. Some of my favorite examples are, “Failure is a chance to restart,” “Investing in yourself isn’t selfish,” “You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive,” and “There’s another way. There always is.” I enjoy the sweet facial expressions and companion vegetables (carrots and tomatoes) that give these sayings life and personality.
I enjoy the positive truths even more because I know that Gopal and his potato aren’t hiding from life’s more difficult realities. The positive path I want to walk is the authentically positive path, on which we are not afraid to face the negative with courage and honesty.
In that light, we stand a much better chance of working through our problems in the real world, the world in which we are inspired not by a sun-drenched meadow, but by a partially-scrubbed, wide-eyed Russet potato who has something to tell us.
