Exposure and Privilege

I used to write songs about the color green. It was and in some ways, still is, my favorite color. I wrote one song when I was about 20, about a dumpster green. Very distinct color. The weight and meaning of the color green to me at that time in my life was something I’ll always remember. The more I look into it, the more I realize that maybe it isn't actually the color I liked, that maybe...it's what it represented.

For fear of getting too abstract, I'll leave it at this–renewal, life, growth, love. Growth in itself is not, as we know, a straight line. Something you can't quite put your finger on, but looking back you know it happened. Black, brown, yellow, then green sometimes. Even black can represent growth.

I find our favorite colors to be representations of our emotional states at the time we most love them. It's like when we were kids some of us thought onions were the result of the devil himself. As we got older, well, onions are aromatic and they make most things taste better. A small slice of heaven now. Green was my favorite color when I was a budding kid in college. It represented everything I was at the time and wanted to be. And boy, did it prevail. Green shoes, green pants, green socks. Thankfully, not green hair, although I did think about it. I used to hate the color pink. For what it represented to me at the time. Weakness, girly, too much. Now, I do indeed love me some pink. Sometimes my favorite color is my lover’s eyes. Sometimes his eyes are green flecked with yellow and sometimes they are like no other color of red I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how he does that.

Sitting at the beach listening to classical music, blue is my color of choice. Blue skies, blue ocean, blue chairs and umbrellas. Blue is often associated to royalty and right about now I find that to be a fitting explanation. My son’s eyes are a mixture of blue and green. Rich. Rich inside.

Now? My favorite color? My favorite color is the color I see. It's the color in front of me. Because where else could I be? If I were looking at blue, wishing to see green, then neither would be quite what they ought to be. Neither would be as bright as they could be, as they are. And none are what they appear to be. 

And so, my favorite color is the color in front of me. A choice. As we get up each day and choose our clothing, as we rack our minds for how to reply, as we choose the foods to buy, as we choose what we will do with this very singular and eternal day.

I've read my fair share of self-help books, spiritual writings, if you will. And I think the same thing I always do, which is, well that makes a lot of sense but I'm not quite grasping it yet. There is always one concrete takeaway that isn't floating off into a spear of intellectual light and it permeates all of them. That takeaway is that it's all right here. That sounds like shit when you're not wanting to hear it and music to your ears when you're living it.

If we were to ask a blind person who has never been able to see what their favorite color was, they would most likely describe a feeling. All things stem from a feeling. We also should consider the privilege of sight and the ability to choose amongst what we see, as favorites. Even your favorite smells hold a specific memory that triggers something in your mind that says, I like that, or, that is not my favorite. It’s chalked up to a moment in time. A bit of sand falling through an hourglass when you were paying attention enough for it to stick. A bird in the wind casting a shadow you could sense.

Circling back to those spiritual texts–the truth is, none of it will help you in the way you think it will. It only passes the time that was going to pass anyway–the sand falls and mounds as it will. When you read writings like that in a state of black or brown, it acts as fertilizer for the green to come. For the grand finale of the growth you're striding towards and seeking. It is visual proof that you got there, that you did it, that you saw it. And when you ingest green while you're green, well, you're just confirming your reality. 

So my favorite color is what I see. Every bit of it is a favorite. To forgo one is to not enjoy the other. A thousand lives, a thousand shades of green, a thousand stories that add up to that one particular texture. Colors. A colorful world if we choose it. It all comes down to choice. I choose now. I choose blue. I choose the salty, sweet, seabirds, and swaying hats in the wind. Whether it's the devil or heaven, I'm living amongst it. And oh look, a woman runs by in orange shorts and now that is my favorite. I was that woman yesterday but I wasn’t wearing that color, I was wearing blue. Then, a man with his child, he’s wearing a red hat and now that is my favorite. For if all of the colors melted into one they would be black. Where we came from, whence we will go. And the in between is where the color happens, is where we find meaning. Is where we get to choose. And whatever is the choice, is the best possible one at that time. For there is not a wrong choice.

Peering through the holes in my tan hat, doing what I love, sitting on quartz…my favorite color is sometimes green and all of them. Color is but a result of living and seeing is a result of having sight, favorites are privileges and I am grateful. To really drive it home, I have no favorites–I have privileges that I’m grateful for.