Colours of the wind...

Clichés over clichés over clichés…life’s full of them. And our perception of it (life), more so. Yes, it is beautiful, no doubt, but I do wonder as to how many of us lose sleep over how we seem to take many of the things that it is comprised of for granted. We all tend to think that there is this uniformity in the way we perceive things. Like the way we hear a song or the way we taste something or better still, the way we see something.
Hmm…ambiguous…
Okay. Let’s see if I can make it any simpler. I mean, I have to get this mess out of my head. It’s been lying there for too long anyway. High time I took care of it and dusted it out. So well, here goes…
I think that one of the most curious things in life is the senses that we have been endowed with, our perception of the world through them and our innate confidence in such and such thing as being this way or that. For example, we see things. We see them as a multitude, but perceive them as individuals. We have a freedom to like or dislike them. Now, likes and dislikes are both very abstract notions, as are other ways and means of gauging our perceptions. But one of the major components of this process, something that has a huge impact on the way we perceive what we see, and in turn gauge what we perceive, are colours…any and every one them.
Colour is something that has intrigued me, mystified me for long. I have always wondered as to how it is that we actually understand how to define the colours that we see. I mean, okay, my mother ‘taught’ me the names of colours and how to recognize them looking at me through the hues of transparent colourful candies. I know it sounds weird, but I can still remember the shiver that ran through me like a silent stream of electricity, as though it wasn’t the colour, but my own vision, and through it I myself, who had somehow gotten her identity by granting recognition to that colour in my life.
And within a span of a few days, my whole world had new names and they all meant more to me than just any old gibberish; the splashes on paper(s) in the drawing room suddenly spoke volumes to me. I knew green from red from blue from orange from…well, you get the basic idea… so much so that I thought that I had made friends with all these splashes, but had I really? Do I know them yet? I mean, the red that my mum can see, might actually be the green that I see, but because she taught me to call that green red, I call it red. So I perceive the colour in a totally different way than what my mother perceives it, and yet I call it ‘red’ so actually, I might be looking at the traffic signal and seeing it the other way round, and yet driving perfectly! I mean, isn’t this freaky? And this could be the case with every sense that we depend on.
Think of taste. What is sour for me, could be bitter to my brother, but since I taught him what the taste was meant to be, what it was supposed to be called, he perceives it as such, and maybe that’s why he hates tamarind and I love it, while he loves bitter gourd, and I hate it! (I’m still a good girl, and eat all that’s put on my plate, though…)
Think of sound. Maybe, just maybe, I can’t stand Linkin Park (most of the lyrics to their songs as well as a few songs are nice too, but not the sounds that they try to pass off as music in most of the others…screeeeech!!!) Anyway, so maybe, just maybe, I can’t stand their kind of music because I just don’t hear it right! Maybe my brother can hear soothing Eric Clapton stuff when he puts in the Linkin Park CD! Maybe the way his ears soak in sound is different from the way mine do!? Maybe that’s where the saying “we’re not on the same wavelength” originates from…
Maybe this is where all the basic differences in life lie. This could, in all seriousness be the root cause of all the difference of opinions. Maybe that’s why different critics can think so diametrically opposite at times and pan really good books or musicians or plays or actors or writers or films ( like Minority Report…I really liked it…yeah yeah yeah…I know its full of contradictions yadda yadda…BUT I STILL LIKED IT!...hmmmph…oh… okay…made a scene…had a splash there…hmm….ahem…)
So maybe, we just need to get on with our lives without tearing others to shreds because we think of something as being something that someone else doesn’t! And its okay! I mean, we’re going through our life without even knowing that we actually have these ‘inbuilt’ differences anyway, right!? So! Big deal! And well, cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. That’s the way I think about it, that’s the way I perceive, and it is because I perceive it that way, that I am the way I am; I am the person that I am. This perception, this very individual way of sipping the world and all it has to offer is the way we all paint our identity, our unique picture of our life with the colours of the wind that float in on the breeze of experience, just the way we perceive them. Think about it.

Song of the day: Hikari
Singer: Hikaru Utada (Check the English version. She’s made it big now. Mark my words, she’s going to make it even bigger soon…)