Colorblind .......

Today being Martin Luther King Day, it was a good time to meditate on the impact color has on all of our lives. As a former interior designer, within my professional world, simply stated color mattered. For instance, the impact of a bold color element strategically placed in a room otherwise dominated by neutrals always made an unexpected statement, which usually delighted my clients. While as a young girl, I was made acutely aware that my father had been born colorblind, a fact which contributed greatly when selecting gifts for him at Christmas, Birthdays and Father’s Day. Yellow was always a favorite color, because it was one of the few he could see accurately, thus wearing something yellow enabled him to feel like the rest of us.

But aside from my work and Dad’s hereditary abnormality, decades went by without my having given much thought to the impact of color until one winter’s day when my son and I were driving through our neighborhood heading in the direction of home he proclaimed, “Mom I can’t wait until Spring. I’m so tired of looking at all of this orange grass.” I looked out the car windows at the faded flaxen-colored lawns carpeting the yards on each side of our street and instantly realized my father’s malady had skipped a generation and landed on Christopher. Once we arrived home and I hastily picked up a handful of household items representative of the color spectrum, I gave him an oral exam where there were no wrong answers, only ‘his’ answers.

As a result, I quickly discovered the only colors he could detect with precision were blues and purples; otherwise his perception was unique to himself. He had just turned twelve-years-old at the time. A few years later during his turbulent teens, my knowledge of color became the one bonding point between the two of us ….. he needed me to assist in clothing selection so that he wouldn’t end up looking ridiculous. Now decades later whenever color selection is a factor, he still calls me for my input.

As a society, I used to think mankind would benefit greatly by becoming colorblind, because at that point ethnicity would cease to matter, and no one would risk suffering from bigotry and prejudice anymore, and neither a man nor woman would have to worry about being assassinated for having dared to dream out loud. However, I have since changed my mind. When I think of a colorless world, how dull and unremarkable would it be if there were no ‘colors of the rainbow’, or if the electromagnetic spectrum of visible light contained no differentiating characteristics?

People – like light – need to be distinguishable in their uniqueness, and color does matter. It takes a broad spectrum of colors to make up the human race as decided upon by the God we worship. As such, who are we to question the wisdom behind His original design?

Many others like Dr. King have since picked up that same torch in an effort to raise the world’s consciousness through campaigning for ‘equality’. Whether India’s Gandhi or South Africa’s late Nelson Mandela, the message is still the same ….. we are all God’s children and as such we all matter equally.

Therefore, maybe a better overall plan would be to become ‘color aware’ versus colorblind to the point we could all learn to celebrate our differences in knowing together we combine to make up the wonderful tapestry divinely inspired and woven by God’s own hands. Then we could all set aside this day to regale and remember a true visionary who was touched by human suffering and moved to act through the spirit that dwells from within.