Red

I want to get back into the habit of writing (and posting here, bi-weekly at least), so I’m going to start out again by setting the bar low with this random rambling about red that I wrote in a tired daze a couple of nights ago.

Oh, and if you’re curious where I’ve been lately, I’ve been keeping a travel blog as I trekked around Cambodia. 🙂

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Red. A colour, an emotion, life. Red runs through our veins, red burns in our cheeks when we’re angry or embarrassed or cold, red envelops us when we close our eyes against a bright light, red tells us to stop, red tells us something is hot, red tells us when the day is dawning or dusking, red warns us and cautions us and alerts us of danger or other important information. Red is not just a colour. Red may be all these things and more, or it may mean something different entirely for you than it does for me. Red represents something. When we see it in one context, it might tell us to stop. In another context, it might tell us to go, to run to safety, or to seek help. Or it might just be a colour. A tool in a designer’s arsenal, serving no purpose besides decoration.

Enveloped in red, what would we see? Red? Or would our eyes adjust? Having no perceivable pattern to interpret, no change in shade or hue, would our eyes still tell us what we’re seeing is red? How could we know? Would we instead see that which red represents to us? Would we see love – that is, would we feel love? Would we see, or feel, anger? Would we be inspired? Or would we be afraid? Would we remember what colour is, when red is all we see? The same might be said of any colour, but red is special. It’s the largest visible wavelength, and I believe it’s the colour that we most often perceive, consciously or subconsciously, exclusively or compositely, deliberately or accidentally.

If you were colour-blind and couldn’t see the colour red, would you still perceive red? You might not perceive the colour as others do, but perception is only partially sight – the rest is interpretation. You can certainly still feel what red represents: heat, anger, love, and so on. So you could assign your own definition of red arbitrarily, without even realising, and you’d be none the wiser until someone told you that you’re colour-blind.

Identity, Revisited

I spend a lot of time thinking about my identity. The person I believe I am. The person whom my family sees. The person my friends see. The person strangers see. The person God wants me to be. And I wonder, at the heart of it all, is there really a true “me,” or am I simply the product of how everyone sees me? It seems like a silly question at first – of course I’m me! – but then I consider how often my actions and choices are influenced by how I want others to perceive me, and I’m not so sure.

I think we all do this to some extent. When we pick what clothes to wear, we consider the activities we may undertake in those clothes, and the people with whom we’ll be spending time with. When we engage in casual conversation with a friend, we talk about things we know are common interests. At our jobs we behave in the manner we want our bosses to see, and to secure a favourable recommendation for when the time arrives to move jobs. Even in our own time, when alone, we read books and watch movies recommended to us by friends, or develop hobby skills that make us feel valued by others or that’ll help to impress a girl we like.

This is all our choice, of course, so these influences are not purely external, but internal as well. For example, I want to be a more sociable person, but that’s not something that comes naturally to me. It’s not an inherent part of my identity, but something I nevertheless want to add to it. Am I thus striving to be something I’m not? Thwarting the age-old relationship advice to simply “be yourself”?

Social connections are intertwined through every facet of our lives, to the point where it becomes hard to see the where the line lies between our perceived identity and our “true” identity, if such a thing exists.

And perhaps this is just me, but when I do spent time on myself, relaxing and doing something I enjoy, it often backfires and ends up making me feel worse, even guilty, for neglecting more important duties. (Nope, it’s not just me.)

When I previously wrote about identity, I began by suggesting our natural inclination is to define ourselves by our external circumstances: occupation, lifestyle choices, the sort of friends we have, and so forth. And the above musings are nothing if not testament to that. But make no mistake, we DO have a “true” identity. This is painfully evident by how we feel when someone gets that identity wrong. Feeling misunderstood is probably the leading cause of bad days for me – days when I’m feeling down, when all the chocolate in the world can’t lift my spirits. It’s a horrible feeling, to think no one “gets” me, and it’s only compounded by my inability to communicate exactly who “me” is (which is correct English, by the way – in this context “me” becomes a proper noun, rather than a pronoun, so it works).

So there’s a real me. And there’s a version of me that other people see. It’s probably even a slightly different version for different people. Now, ideally, those identities would overlap quite significantly, meaning we don’t “pretend” or put on a mask around different people. Because the further our perceived identity deviates from our personal identity, the more misunderstood we’ll feel. We don’t want to feel misunderstood; we want to feel perfectly understood. We want people to recognise that our seemingly-random actions are actually purposeful, and that our peculiarities are rooted in reasons that are perfectly sensible in our own minds. In fact, I believe it is the most basic desire of every single person, to be seen, to be known, to be loved. These things go hand-in-hand: it is impossible to fully know a person and not love them the way they love themselves. (Yeah, I sorta stole that line from Orson Scott Card.)

Of course, we don’t really fully know anyone. We can’t. Only God can. But perhaps we can aspire to come close to that level of connection in just one or two of our closest relationships. If we can do that – if we can strive to understand their identity to the fullest extent of our comprehension (bearing in mind that identity can change with time, so it’ll require a continual effort) – then in doing so we’ll be showing them love, and they’ll be in a position to reciprocate, to meet our own desire to be understood.

And hopefully I won’t feel the need to stay up late musing about identity any more. 😉

Poems

This week I just decided to write a few poems. The purpose behind each one is self-explanatory, I think, but don’t hesitate to ask about anything.

A shivering wind, a skeletal grin, a prickly pin, and elven kin.
These words grow faint with a vintage taint
Old concepts now quaint like an old coat of paint.

A snazzily witty fixed-width poem
Is the most irksome poem to write
Trickier than the wicked Jeroboam
When he led Israel from the light
Peculiar words creatively plucked
From the dim recesses of language
Like waste from a shoddy aqueduct
Before they enter a wrong passage
What I write next does not matter
Rhyme or proverb, it'll be a pain
Though perhaps if it's the latter
My efforts may not all be in vain
I hope you have enjoyed this text
Though the rhythm is pure anarchy
I'll write some proper verse next
But look - a three-headed monkey!

 

In the times gone by
It is no wonder why
The people would scry
And look up to the sky
“I wonder,” they said
As they laid back in bed
“Why the stars look so fed
When the world is so dead.”
For meaning comes not to those who search
Nor even to those who frequent church
Looking at stars will leave you in the lurch
As will fire, water, nature, and birch.
There’s but one thing that’ll put your search to end
You can read about it in the greatest book ever penned
A man, a priest, a lord, a king,
A Son so glorious he gives us cause to sing
Meaning’s not found in creation, but its Creator
Our God, our Father, our Redeemer, our Saviour.