Colours of Life II

Thanks for all your comments on my thinkinglifebook. Really appreciate it.

As I was looking back on the Colour of Life reflection, it just struck me to look into how the colour blind people really perceive our world. Compare the two photos above, we can see that the grapes which are purple are actually seen as blue by a colourblind. Observing in more detail, we can see that the red at the background is viewed as brown by a colour-deficient person.

Firstly, there are two types of colour blindness (1)Protanopia (2)Deuteranopia. Interestingly, people with the above two types of colour blindness( or some may term it as colour deficiency) seem to be unable to see colours like red. Instead what they see are (1)dirty brown and (2)dirty yellow respectively, according to the website: http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/DaltonDemo/DD08.html.

A sudden sadness really came over me. In my opinion, the colours really don't look very nice. I'm not here to judge. But I really thank God that He gave me my perfect eyesight (though its getting worse as I age). But then again, I really don't know how to feel. In short, I'm rather perplexed.

Is there anyone who can enlighten me? How should I be feeling?

Colours of Life

Have you ever felt sad or maybe pitied people who are blind or even colour-blind?

There is a very interesting incident that I met with and I would like to share it to all of you who are out there. In my course of study in SMU (Singapore Management University), I stumbled upon a friend who is actually colour-blind! He looks just like any normal people, but he can't differentiate between colours like purple & blue and yellow & green! Isn't it amazing? This caused me to be extremely curious when I first heard that he was colour-blind. My evil behaviours/curosity led me to the constant testing of how he would perceive colours.

Experiment 1:

I highlighted a portion of the paper with purple and another portion with blue. Knowing that I was "testing" him and he gave the correct answer. I asked him how he knew which was which and he replied that it was due to the relative gradients of the colours. This led me to experiment 2.

Experiment 2:

This time, I folded the paper into 2 and coloured both sides differently (one purple and one blue). To my surprise, he actually said that both are blue! Isn't it amazing? I have never seen a person who is colour-blind!

Ok. That's besides the point. These two experiments led me to two conclusions.

1. Many things in life is relative

For example, if you go out with your friends and your friends are always late (say 30 mins late) and you are actually 15 mins late. Comparatively, you are early because you have to wait for your friend's arrival. Conversely, if your friend is always on time ans you are still 15 mins late, you would be considered as late. Hence, this concludes that in life many things are relative, being 15 min late, you may be perceived as early in one and late in the other.

2. Different Perceptions

While conversing with my friend with regards to his colour-blindness, I was actually very ignorant and mentioned that "Isn't it very sad that you can't see all the colours? Like God has created a magnificant spectum of colours and yet you can only see the basic colours." However, he gave me an answer that really struck me. He said "However, you will never be able to see what I see". This statement is really true! Although society has prompted us to help the needy and helpless, we don't always have to sympathize them. You see, they may be enjoying their lives in their own ways that you may never experience.

For example, imagine a boy whose parents are rich and could provide him with anything he wants. Then in school, this boy meets another boy who is really poor and have nothing but a piece of bread for lunch. In your perception, who do you think is more well off? On the surface, the rich boy may look more well off. However, if you realised that the piece of bread was made by the poor boy's mother, would you in turn say that the poor boy is more well off? The perception of "well off" can be differentiated into material and emotional. The poor boy may be more well off emotionally while the rich boy may be more well off materialistically.

So what is your perceptions of life? Which one would you wish to be? The poor boy or the rich boy?