color your world

I'm off this week, so I'm remembering this one:

I saw a man on TV who is color blind. Completely color blind. He sees no color. It's rare but not unheard of. No color. All his life. Imagine that! I did.

It got me to wondering about this: Is the world we see the same regardless of who is looking at it? When I see green and you see green, is the color we see independent of us? Or is green the name we both agree on while we look at the same leaf but you have your green and I have mine?

Which led me to another thought: We not only see what we can see, we see what we want to see.

Sometimes I pass a guy asking for a handout at the end of the highway exit ramp. I see someone who is down on their luck -- way down -- and I think I can surely part with a few bucks and maybe skip my coffee that afternoon. But some people see a manipulative con man and refuse to see anything else. We both see the exact same person, but we have very different realities.

If you think the world has done you wrong because you're struggling to pay your bills, or find a meaningful relationship or feeling wronged by an argument with your friend, is that because the world really is that way or is it because that's just the way you see it? Do you have a blind spot? It's tough to realize that your assessment of things may not be a shared reality. You might be the only one who sees things your way. Realizing that is step one, and it might feel like bad news. The good news, step two, is realizing you have had the control all the time. You always have.

Unlike someone who is genuinely color blind and has no choice in the matter, if you don't like the colors in your world, guess what? You don't have to settle for things "the way they are." You can adjust your focus, and change the way you look at the picture. It will take some work, definitely. But, you really do have the control to color things a little differently, a little brighter, perhaps from a different perspective - and you might wind up finding life much more to your liking.

(c) 2026 www.megreilly360.com

5/4/2026