Look at All Those Colors

Well, hello world. Let's go for a little trip. You and me together. On a path that I rarely treed out into the hinterlands of my brain. And what I mean by all of this, and where this came from, was this morning. I ran. Well, I like to get up early on Saturdays and go for a really long run. Today was really no different, I didn't go that far. But then I finished and I live about maybe a quarter of a mile from the Missouri River. It's a very large river for anyone who might not understand. And at 8 a.m. on Saturday, since 2020, the very early days of COVID, the recovery meetings that I'm a part of, we had to do something if we wanted to keep meeting. So we decided to meet outside at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning in a park. And at first, it was pretty funny because we would sit six to eight feet apart in lawn chairs outside wearing masks, going to any lengths to share with each other and find some strength and hope. And it's just kept going. And the nearly six years since, over six years, I don't even know. We have rarely, I bet you I could count on one hand, maybe two hands, how many times we haven't had a meeting. Rain, sleet, snow, hail, cold heat, it does not matter. And it's been a wonderful experience. It's probably one of my very favorite meetings. And it's an absolutely, lovely way to start your day. So I ran this morning, really nice run. And I was done by about 750. So I walked to back to my car and I got my lawn chair. I always have a lawn chair, switched out my t-shirt because the other one was a little damp. It's pretty humid this morning. Got my drink. So I had a big, thankful ice water. Walked back over and we sit. We like to sit in the same pavilion that we'd been using forever. We don't always get it, but it's really nice. You get to see a lot of people walk by and I'm telling you this morning the park was, was poppin. It was amazing. There were people everywhere running, walking, kids, strollers, bikes. You name it. There's a farmer's market going on. There's pickleball courts. There's disc golf. There's other shelters. There's people fishing down at the river. It's just humanity. And as I'm sitting there, before anybody came, I was struck by the colors. Just the colors. The blue, the light blue, the greens, the browns, the reds, the birds, just this abundance of just pure radiance and color. And for a moment I was just overwhelmed with appreciation. And in question, I understand there's a philosophy around color. I don't know. It's like metaphysics. People talk about perception, aesthetics around the color. And so I was just thinking about color. And what does it mean? And how does it work? And how the fact that we're on this giant rock with a molten interior that's hurtling through space around a star in a galaxy. Just the fact that I can sit in a lawn chair under a pavilion and see all of these colors and appreciate them and just in a pure amazement that this is real that this exists. You know, that's like I was looking at the blue. I'm like, okay, blue is like, is blue like out there? Is it in the world? Or is it just like in my mind? Is there like some kind of weird relationship between what I think is blue and what blue actually is? I don't know. It's the whole like, is it objective? Is it subjective? I see the blue sky or let's say the green leaves is the green actually in the leaf. I mean, I guess there are like chlorophyll that makes it green. And then when the light hits it reflects that color. But then I don't know, like I'm like, is that real? Or is it, is there my experiencing green via it going into my eyes and then into my brain? And like, is that where it is? Then I think, okay, do you see the same green that I see? Like, is that true? I might say at that screen, you might say it's green. But is that because we learned, we both learned what green was, even though it might not actually be the same? And how do we, I don't know, that the inner like private experience of color? It was weird. Like, I just kept thinking, like, what is it? Do other people have like, so I'm an English speaker? Are there, and we say, I mean, I don't know, we have shades of green, but are there other distinctions in terms of color that I don't use in my language? So therefore, I don't see them? Right? Like, so it's that kind of, almost like a chicken in the egg. If I, if I see the color first, then I name it, or just giving it the name, give it more of like the shape in my brain. And then maybe this morning, since it was one of those, like, it was, you know, 8 a.m., not quite 8 a.m., it was cloudy. The sun wasn't shining to, you know, it's, it's almost like it was diffusing through the clouds. So the colors were, were crisp, but at the same time not overwhelmingly bright. And then there's all the science, right? I was thinking, okay, so what about, like, because you have the color spectrum, there are wavelengths that I can see that other, like, from my understanding, like a B, I thought about B's for a second. My understanding is they can see infrared, and that's how they know what flowers to go to. It's just seems, it was just such a, this kind of rich vein of thought. It was really cool. And then, all my friends showed up, and we talked about trying to be better human beings. That's not a bad morning, and I'm lucky to be a part of it very fortunate. Peace.