On Becoming Voluntarily Colourblind

This morning I became colourblind. Not medically. Strategically.

The decision was made at approximately 8:47am, in the kitchen, during what began as a conversation about towels. I say "began as." By the time it reached its natural conclusion it had touched on personal investment in shared spaces, the communicative value of aesthetic preferences, and whether my general attitude toward interior decisions constitutes a form of emotional withdrawal. All of this, I want to be clear, from a question about towels.

The question was: "Which do you prefer, the sage or the duck egg?"

Now. I want to take a moment to explain something that I suspect will resonate with a significant portion of the population, particularly that portion which has at some point found itself staring at two objects that are, to all meaningful purposes, the same colour, both of which would look perfectly fine in the bathroom, and which, in any reasonable cosmological accounting, are indistinguishable in their contribution to human flourishing.

The honest answer to "which do you prefer, the sage or the duck egg?" is: "I genuinely do not have a preference." This is not indifference to the person asking. It is not passive aggression. It is not a failure of imagination or an absence of aesthetic sensibility. It is simply a calm acknowledgement that the specific wavelength of light reflected by a bathroom towel does not, in fact, register in my threat-assessment systems as a matter requiring an opinion.

The honest answer is, however, catastrophically wrong.

 

The colour question, as any experienced navigator of domestic life will confirm, is not actually a question about colour. It is a question about participation. It is asking: are you here? Do you care? Are you, in the specific sense of this moment and this towel, invested in our shared existence? "I don't mind" translates, in the receiving ear, not as the perfectly neutral statement it is intended to be, but as "I have mentally checked out of this bathroom and possibly this relationship."

I have said "I don't mind" approximately four hundred times. Each time, without exception, it has been received as though I had said something considerably worse. The evidence was in: the honest answer was not working. A new approach was required.

And then, somewhere between the sage and the duck egg, it came to me with the clarity of a man who has finally, after years of research, identified the correct tool for the job.

"It's no good asking me," I said, with what I hoped was a rueful but brave smile. "I'm colourblind."

 

The transformation was immediate and, I will be honest, rather more moving than I had anticipated.

"Oh," she said. There was a pause. "I didn't know that."

"It's not something I talk about much," I said, which is entirely true, given that I have never talked about it at all, having not previously been colourblind.

"Which colours can't you see?"

Here I had, I will admit, not fully prepared my position. "Greens," I said, with perhaps slightly too much speed. "And blues. Some of them. The similar ones." I gestured vaguely at the towels in a way that I hoped conveyed the tragic futility of my condition.

"That's..." She looked at me with an expression I had not seen directed at me in the context of a towel conversation before. It was, unless I am very much mistaken, compassion. "That must be really frustrating."

"You learn to live with it," I said.

She chose the duck egg. She seemed happy. I received a brief shoulder-squeeze on the way out of the kitchen. It was, by any domestic metric, an outstanding outcome.

 

I am aware that there are those who will object to this strategy on the grounds that it involves saying something that is not strictly true. To those people I would gently suggest that the alternative, "I do not care what colour the towels are and I am constitutionally incapable of caring," is technically truer and demonstrably worse in every measurable outcome. The universe does not have a position on the moral weight of towel-related colour preferences. The electromagnetic spectrum, which contains the full range of visible light, has never once expressed an opinion about sage versus duck egg. Only humans have opinions about this, and only some of them are being asked.

The colourblindness position, I have now concluded, is not a lie so much as a diplomatic translation. It converts "I have no preference" into something the other party can work with, namely a medical condition that, while unfortunate, at least explains the otherwise baffling absence of towel opinions. It reframes the non-participant as a sympathetic figure rather than a disengaged one. It transforms the conversation from a negotiation about investment into a small act of care toward someone with a limitation they didn't ask for.

The only technical risk I have identified is the traffic lights problem. I shall be navigating those with continued confidence and a serene expression, and if anyone asks, I shall explain that I manage perfectly well by position. This is, as it happens, completely true, which is a pleasing bonus.

The duck egg towels arrive on Thursday. I am very much looking forward to not noticing them.

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