On Rainbows (and Other Colourful Things)

The other day it occurred to me that reading a writer’s description of a colour might be the closest we can get to all experiencing it in the same way.

And then it occurred to me that I was wrong: a writer’s description is just as subjective as anyone else’s perception.

It fascinates me that we can all look at the same pasture at the same time and agree that we’re seeing a green field. Maybe we’ll even agree that it’s a dull green or a yellowish green. But we’ll never have any way of knowing if we’re seeing it in exactly the same way, if that particular shade of green looks the same to all of us. This idea makes me feel both excited and lonely. I really like the idea that we could all be having subtly different experiences of the same colour, that our points of view could be so unique. Yet it feels very isolating to think that we might be the only person experiencing something in a particular way.

This is something that bothers me every now and then. On this particular occasion, I was briefly very excited that we might all be united by reading the same description of the colour of oranges in a fruit bowl or the same passage about the light shimmering in someone’s chestnut hair. Then I remembered the subjectivity of the writer’s own perception, and the influence of the way we normally see things on our interpretation of the description.

There really is no way of knowing whether we’re all seeing the same thing when talk about the colour blue. I find this unsettling.

Image by Gavin Bobo