Yesterday one of friend asked me what my favorite color is and I had no clue about that. She further reiterated the question “my favorite color is blue, what’s yours?” I still had no answer to that so I asked her how do I know which is my favorite color. She suggested to me that the color of clothes that I wear might depict my color interest. I checked my closet and found that I have clothes of almost all the colors. I started to creep a feeling that there’s something wrong with me that I don’t have a personal favorite. I have heard people talk since they are kids about what color they like, someone had asked me this question long time ago and I had replied green, but my answer had to do more with my professional background than my personal interest. Green is the color of vegetation and I’m a biologist. But, I can’t say for sure that green is my favorite color. So I decided to talk with more people to find how they perceive color and finally explore my favorite.
The first person I talked also had blue as her favorite color. So I asked her how do you know and she replied me that that’s the color she wears. I asked her do you want to paint your walls blue and she said no. Second person I talked liked green; she not only wore green but would love to paint her walls green too but, she wouldn’t want to drive a green car. I asked couple of other people for their opinion but I couldn’t find the best logic that could point me towards what my favorite color should be. However, I deduced couple of conclusions from my conversations: 1). People have different color preferences for different settings even though they have one favorite color (for example, color of clothes, color of flowers, color of walls etc), 2). There is stronger opinion on what color you dislike than on what color you like (even I know I don’t want to be wearing a red wardrobe, or paint my wall red). I also felt that one likes a particular color based on how he/she responds to it. In general, blue or green color represent peaceful, yellow represents alert, red represents danger etc, so people respond to a particular color based on their nature as well as physical environment.
I concluded that one doesn’t need to single out a favorite color; they might not even have one. Besides, red and pink (perhaps purple too) I like to wear every color clothes. When I dream of a perfect scene I see blue skies and water, lush green vegetation, and light yellow flowers, so all those are my favorite colors.
PS: Picture courtesy of Lena Al-Dujaili
