A Splash of Colour

I occasionally come across a clip on social media showing colour blind people trying on colour correction glasses and seeing their visual world transform from hues of greys into an explosion of brilliant colours. Considering that seeing the world as it truly is, for the first time, their reactions are pretty overwhelming.

But how do we know what the world actually looks like?

What if the actual world is nothing but different shades of grey and it is the defect in our visual abilities that make us see it in all these different colours?

What if the colour blind people are the visually correct people and the rest are the ones with defect?

We have based our assumption on the fact that since MOST of the population can see colour than most of us must be right.

But are we right?

I long ago realized that the visual ability of human beings is very limited. It probably dawned on me during a game I used to play with myself when I was younger, where I would try to think up of a colour that no one had ever seen.

I could never do it.

Whatever shade or hue that I managed to conjure up in my mind would always be a combination of an existing colour that we already know of. That is when I realized that our vision is confined inside the Rainbow nicknamed VIBGYOR (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red): the optical spectrum visible to the human eye.

The ultra and infra colours that exist beyond this spectrum are invisible to us, yet certain species other than humans can see them.

That would probably mean that certain animals, birds and insects that can see colours beyond the range that we can see them are the ones with correct vision and we, the human race are collectively the colour blind ones?

Somehow, I don’t think that is how it is.

Just because somebody is not able to see things the way the rest see it does not mean that that somebody has a defect in their vision. It just means that they have a different way of seeing things than the rest.

If one is unable to see or even visualize something that is visible to another doesn’t mean that that something is not there or that it does not exit. It just means that either one has not been given the ability to see it or more likely, one is not opening up his or her mind enough to be able to see it.

Needless to say, I am no longer talking about seeing colours only.

It is good to have your own point of view but it is even better to be able to see things from another’s.

Those who cannot do this are the truly blind ones.