Color Me A Rainbow!

“I'm a rainbow today…All the colors of the world are in me”

Colors by Kira Willey

Blue is my favorite color. In school I was always in the Blue House. I tend to gravitate towards blue colored clothes, no matter how many I already own. I wonder how we decide what our favorite color is. There are numerous songs written about the effects of color in our lives. A good example of such songs are Colors by Kira Willey, Colors of the wind by Vanessa Williams or Colorblind by Darius. Being blue means to be sad or under the weather. I don’t like that much. When I think of blue, I get joyful. I think of blue skies, blue waters, bluebirds, bluebells, and blueberries- brings a smile to my face and a spring to my step.

So I decided to go look up how the phrase got its meaning. I learnt the word itself is derived from the Old French word bleu. Wikipedia says, “In the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. The phrase "feeling blue" is linked to a custom among many old deepwater sailing ships. If the ship lost the captain or any of the officers during its voyage, she would fly blue flags and have a blue band painted along her entire hull when returning to home port. It may also be in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a trigger of depressive emotions.” In German, on the other hand, to be "blue" (blau sein) is to be drunk. I know plenty of people who would enjoy being blue in this manner.

Thinking of colors also took me back to my school days, where we were taught color schemes and how different colors can cause diverse effects. Feng Shui, a rapidly growing technique, believes that Color is one of the easiest ways to shift the energy within a home to create harmony. Advocates of this art believe that color is like music, beneficial and inspiring, and the more colors you harmoniously absorb throughout the day, the higher your sense of well-being is.

 I am not quite sure where I stand with regards to Feng Shui but I do believe that colors have an extreme power over our mental state of mind. We learn, from a young age, through imitation, experimentation and education of how colors can influence our emotions, our actions and our response to various people, things and ideas. The impact of the many colors in our environment is usually not conscious.  Most of us know that vibrant colors (reds and oranges) can enliven and stimulate us into action while cooler colors (blues and violets) calm and relax us. Without getting into the specifics of how each person perceives color, what is clear is that the colors you see truly exist in your own mind.

This makes me feel, that we each can create our own color palettes, our own rainbow, our own color spectrums to suit whatever mood we are in. Being unique individuals, this ability can give us some control of our lives. We can be blue or grey or green or we can choose to be rainbows, enjoying the benefits, psychologically and emotionally, of a rainbow of colors.