I need the black jacket to be blue (For now)

It was a good hike with my friend. The arguments were light-hearted. For the most part. But my friend was so obviously wrong. Their jacket was clearly a darker shade of blue, one of my favourite shades, but they insisted it was a washed out black.

Both of us were supremely confident in our assessments and refused to budge. On one hand, their interests and cultural background gave them a keen sense of aesthetics and fashion. On the other hand, I knew what the fuck blue looks like. 

The conversation quickly turned into a standstill where we had to agree to disagree to move on (quite literally, to complete the hike). Internally, we both knew we were right and the other person didn’t know what they were talking about.  Our agreed end was to consult a colour theory expert, as well as Chat GPT:

GPT and my friend were both clearly wrong about this. 

I was quite surprised by my insistence on knowing that it was blue. I acknowledge I am not fashion forward or aesthetically inclined, traits that give a person a good sense of colours. Usually, I acknowledge where I am not an expert, and defer to better judgements and/or data. 

Upon reflection, I realised that it was less to do with colours, and more to do with the implications of rocking a core worldview. Everyone learns about colours growing up, and that forms a foundational way of labelling the world. I am also quite partial to darker shades of blue. These two points explain why I was quite insistent on defending my position, despite the facts staring me in the face. 

First, if my existing perspective on colours is wrong, then I am genuinely wary of how I will perceive things when I next leave the apartment. It could shake me up enough that I can’t do routine activities without paying extra attention to the colours of things, increasing my cognitive load in moments that I don’t want to. One can say this extra sense of present-ness is good, but that is not the angle I am exploring today.

Second, as a ‘blue guy’, I do feel a sense of defensiveness in knowing my blues. Naturally there is an instinct to preserve my identify as a blue guy.  

Beyond just colour theory, I sense a general resistance towards opening doors that I know will change me. Specifically, those doors with a sign that says:

 PERSPECTIVE-ALTERING INSIGHTS AHEAD: YOU WILL NOT BE THE SAME AFTER THIS POINT. 

The catch is, the sign is not always there. 

The last time I can think of unknowingly entering a perspective-altering door was reading Nassim Taleb’s books during the pandemic. He writes about risk, uncertainty, and navigating the world in response to them. It completely reframed my perspectives on decision-making; I will never go skydiving or bungee jumping, despite having these on my bucket list as a teen (There is never an effective enough hedge that could convince me).

Another example is reading Ramit Sethi’s “I Will Teach You to be Rich” before I started my first job. I didn’t expect much from another self-help book, but the way he conveyed the practical and psychological elements of personal money management shaped the foundation of how I approached financial decision-making. 

These 2 examples illustrate me unwittingly walking through a perspective-altering door. 

But what happens when I can see the sign clearly before I enter? At the time of writing, I struggle to think of clearly-signed doors I have walked through. A couple of reasons for this, the first is that I simply forgot those moments. The second is that these may not have been tied to specific events, but rather a sequence or collections of situations over time. 

Take the example of me deciding to take a career break to pursue my masters. While I knew it was going to grow and stretch myself, I didn’t forecast it as something that would completely alter my perspective into something unrecognisable to the person I was when making the decision. So these types of decisions do not fit that category. 

Briefly returning to colour theory, one reason I did not want to accept the possibility that the jacket was black instead of blue was that I didn’t want to deal with the aftermath; would I be walking around London scrutinising the colour of every jacket, arguing with strangers? Do I accept that some of my favourite blues were actually black? Does that make me a goth?

On a more serious note, this mirrors my reluctance to directly engage with certain topics in my life, because I know the doors to these topics contain that sign. I know that reflecting on these topics could permanently alter how I view the world, in a way that my present-self may not recognise. And that is somewhat daunting. These topics come in the usual buckets - career planning, personal values, lifestyle choices, etc. There is a fascinating internal tension where I am aware just enough to know that I must reflect on these at some point, but cautious about reflecting on them at this very moment. 

Knowing when or if to reflect requires some discernment; some topics need to be reflected on, some don’t. Some topics that need to be reflected on, should be tackled now, some can wait. 

The category that interests me the most are the topics that need to be reflected on, but not necessarily right now. My theory for this category is that, with enough self-awareness and willingness to actually follow through on future reflection, the way we behave around this topic can be a useful tool in the short term.

For example, a sense of paranoia about financial security can result in a life of penny-pinching and perhaps under-exploring the many ways you can experience life by using money. So we can acknowledge that an extreme sense of paranoia in financial matters is unhealthy. However, if you have this sense of paranoia at an early age, it might serve you well. It can nudge you to save more and be prudent with financial decisions, helping you build a nest egg that compounds over years and decades, eventually eliminating the associated paranoia. 

However, the eventual elimination of the paranoia does not happen naturally. There must be a clear commitment and follow through to work on this issue once a financial milestone is reached, otherwise you carry that paranoia with you beyond its useful shelf life. If I were perpetually paranoid about financial security beyond a reasonable level of net worth, I might miss the forest for the trees and miss out on good opportunities and life experiences. 

There are always doors with that big “LIFE-ALTERING” sign attached to them. Am I consciously or unconsciously avoiding certain doors, and if so, why? Is it instrumental to preserve certain worldviews, or should I open the door? If blue really is black, am I ready for my world to be rocked?