An Allegory of Colors

There's a city where everyone loves yellow. It's the color of happiness and excitement, so all the people there paint things bright yellow and wear yellow clothes all year. But Bob really likes the color blue. It's not that he dislikes yellow, but to Bob, a little splash of blue looks nice alongside the yellow.

When Bob was a little boy, his preschool class drew crayon pictures. He drew a big yellow sun. Then he used black crayon to draw his house, and filled it in bright yellow. With a green crayon he filled in his front lawn, and then he asked his teacher for a blue crayon to draw the creek that ran nearby.

"What do you want the blue crayon for?" asked his teacher.
He explained, "I need it to draw the water."
The teacher blinked and then told him, "Blue is a sad color. That's why we call it 'feeling blue' when someone's sad. Water's actually clear, so why don't you just draw the edges of the water with black?"
He said "okay" and went back to his desk, but he couldn't understand what was wrong with the blue crayon. He didn't think it was a sad color, or any particular kind of color even. It was just blue.

A few years later, for Bob's birthday, his friend gave him a blue shirt with "Bob" written on the front. He really liked it and rushed upstairs to change into it. Then he noticed that his friends seemed distracted and a little uncomfortable whenever he talked to them. He thought, maybe they don't like my shirt, but he sort of liked standing out, and he didn't mind too much if a couple of people thought he was weird. After they all went home, he went on a walk, and an old lady yelled across the street at him, "Is that some kind of protest?"
"What?" he called back.
"Your shirt is blue. Are you trying to annoy everyone?"
"It's just a color. What's it to you?"
She scowled. "Everyone else likes yellow. You're probably just trying to get attention..."
He did like some of the attention he had gotten, especially since it was his birthday, but he was pretty sure that wasn't the only reason he liked wearing the shirt.

After that day, whenever he noticed his blue shirt in the closet, he always thought of the old lady, so he didn't feel like wearing it anymore. Eventually it was just taking up space in his closet and his mind, so he threw it away.

One day, when Bob was all grown up, he needed to paint his fence. His house was already solid yellow, so he went to the store and bought the last can of pastel blue paint for the fence. After a long afternoon of painting, he finally had the last fencepost covered. He stood back to admire it, and then went inside for the night. When he woke up the next morning, he looked out of his window, and his fence was yellow again! He asked his next-door neighbor about it later, and the neighbor said, "Don't you like it? We noticed you couldn't find yellow paint for your fence, so the whole neighborhood pitched in to surprise you."
Bob felt a little silly. "Well, I kind of liked it better when it was blue..."
"Buddy, the whole town loves yellow, and you're the only one who likes blue. You'd better learn to like things yellow or you'll never be happy around here."
He relented. "Yeah, I guess you're right. It does look pretty good yellow."

And he meant it...sort of. But sometimes when he was thinking hard about something, he would suddenly remember his fence wasn't blue anymore, and then he remembered he was trying to like yellow, and soon his head was spinning with conflicting emotions and he would forget what he had been thinking about.

One rainy day, Bob was thinking about the blue shirt he had when he was younger, and he realized something. When other people made things yellow, they weren't trying to do anything in particular. They were just doing what came naturally, it was easy, and Bob wanted them to be happy, too. On the other hand, whenever Bob thought something should be blue, it was always a big event. It wasn't just that yellow was popular, it was mostly that people expected things to be yellow. When he wanted something blue, he always had to have a reason for it, and people would assume that he wanted to be irritating.

Sometimes, when he felt like things should be different, he did like to irritate people a little, because it seemed like it would help change things somehow. He discovered, though, that when he irritated people, they tried even harder to find things that could be yellow, if not to spite Bob then to lift their spirits. Like quicksand, he could do nothing and things would gradually get worse, or he could try to do something and the situation would decline even faster.

The more he realized that his perspective didn't matter, the more it frustrated him every time he noticed yellow going up somewhere. It hadn't always been a big deal. Like he had said, it's just a color. He tried to learn not to care, but he felt frustrated with himself for ever having cared, and soon it wasn't just about the colors anymore. Now he was always frustrated, and nobody could understand why Bob always got so worked up over colors.