Color: In Everyday Life

 

 Colors. Seriously, I cannot remember the last time I really thought about colors. Well, that is, aside from what color shirt would go best with a certain color pants or the color of my favorite sports team. Color is not rare to see, yet it is so relevant in the world that it becomes the essence of background noise. 

            As a small child, we were instructed on the names of the colors we had been seeing more or less since birth. The naming of these colors, much like everything else to us at the time, were both fascinating and confusing. Parents and teachers would point at various objects and quiz us on the names. At times it was fun, while other times it was just frustrating. After all, who wants to try and remember a name like “orange” when it looks a lot like the color called “yellow” and there is a box of LEGOs calling your name in the next room. Obviously, we learn the difference between “yellow” and “orange,” despite our best efforts to just run away and play, eventually. Now, in our age, we can grasp the basics. Why go much further unless you are willing to devote your life and career to topics such as “Brain chemistry, the interaction between the unconscious and the conscious by way of the language of colors”? There are still more interesting things, whether it be an iPod, cell phone, or soccer ball, calling your name in the next room. Now, the parents and teachers are trying to focus your attention of math equations with letters instead of numbers and books about dead fictional characters with names you can't clearly call to mind. So, why drag your mind kicking and screaming back to the topic of something that couldn't hold your focus for longer than 3 minutes in kindergarten?
            As a young adult, the truths of the world come often without warning. The worst part of it all is realizing that along the way the basics have been lost along with most of your LEGO collection. I may still be able to identify one color as “blue” and another as “purple,” but I forgot or never learned the importance of knowing these facts. When I am forced to think back to colors, I am forced to think of many things I have also forgotten. The color of my favorite shirt now, for example, is blue. This was the color of my favorite pajama dress at the age of six and the color of my favorite stuffed animal at the age of two. Purple is the color of the walls in my room, which is my favorite color of fireworks and the color of the baby blanket my parents use to swaddle me in. Green is most often found on my sports jersey, but I don't mind too much, because I have been staining my clothes the color grass green for as long as I can remember. Red happens to be a favorite color when I watch the sunset. It is also the color of an old grade school backpack and my favorite pen I keep at home, hidden and safe from all my siblings. Most of my color choices were for reasons I forget or maybe for no reason at all. It is a furniture of my life I often let fade to the background, because more pressing matters were calling my name. Yet, I have a favorite color to wear, a favorite color for my notebooks, a favorite color for my bedroom, and favorite colors for many other things. Perhaps the best example of the importance of colors is when I decide something as simple as what to eat at lunch. The perfectly red apple looks a lot better than the brown pear sitting right next to it. The brown lettuce looks less appetizing than the bright yellow mac and cheese. Chances are, unless I am allergic to apples or cheese, I will be eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese with an apple for lunch that day. Which I will enjoy in my favorite red top, since the yellow shirt seems to have somehow gotten a large brown stain on it.
             Color plays an important, though often subtle, role in life. Since they are important and have managed to infiltrate nearly every aspect of my life, colors deserve a bit more attention. How is this possible? It can be as simple as asking a younger brother why his current favorite color is red or as complex as asking myself why I seem to like to like the color blue a lot more than usual lately. This way I may even learn a little bit more about myself and those surrounding me.