In a world of partial color blindness, I have to make do with the colors I can experience clearly, without confusion, and in the same way that normal people apparently do. That rules out lots of different combinations, but leaves most of the primary colors intact. I’ve always said that blue is my favorite color, which indicates that I am more similar to normal human beings than I might think—people most often identify blue as their favorite color. But yellow does something very positive to me. I find it calming and centering; I was very pleased when shades of yellow were chosen for the halls, offices and 
classrooms in the beautiful new humanities 
building on campus that is the home of the interdisciplinary program I direct, just as I was pleased when a slightly different shade of yellow was chosen several years earlier as the dominant color in the renovated building the philosophy department moved into during my stint as philosophy department chair back in 2006. Somebody must have known that keeping the chair or director centered and focused is step one to avoiding academic squabbling in the ranks.
So I was not surprised when I found out from the “What Color is your Aura?” quiz on Facebook that my aura is yellow. Most of my academic readers are now sniffing in contempt—“Aura?? Now you’ve really gone to the new-agey dark side, Morgan!” 
Not really, although truth in advertising requires revealing that I just had my first forty-five minute Reiki session a couple of weeks ago from a Reiki master who is a friend of ours from church. I haven’t detected any life-changing results, but the session relaxed me sufficiently that I slept for at least fifteen of the forty-five minutes. Regardless, taking the aura quiz is far more about my obsession with Facebook quizzes than crystals or chakras.
Your aura is yellow! You are optimistic and intelligent, with a friendly, creative presence. A yellow aura signifies that you are full of life and energy, an inspiring and playful person. 
You may be on the brink of a new awakening, close to finding new meaning in your current life.
The description is only partially accurate—I’m happy to own “optimistic,” “intelligent,” “creative,” and “inspiring,” but no one has ever accused me of being “full of life and energy,” “friendly,” or “playful.” Maybe my aura is “dirty yellow,” the color my mother used to say my hair was before it started turning gray in my early twenties.
My natural way of engaging with fellow humans was described quite well when I took the “What Kind of Cat are You?” quiz a while ago. I could not resist. I am a cat person, and have been owned by several cats over the past fifty years: Stokely, Natalie, Rachel, Midnight, Express, Moses, and Spooky, just to name a few—the bookend cats on the list both lived to be eighteen. Cat personalities range as widely as human personalities do, and I was not surprised to find out that
You are a cat who is like, “Nope! Leave me alone.”! Everybody always wants to be all up in your business and you are like, “No thanks! I don’t really like people? Please go away and leave me alone?” But they don’t. They never go away and leave you alone.
The “leave me alone” cat sounds like a lot of my freshman students. He managed to use the word “like” both incorrectly and correctly in just a couple of lines. Let’s be clear: I do not use the word “like” improperly, have never used the phrase “all up in your business” and do not turn statements of fact into questions (that would make me sound like a Valley Girl). That said, the “leave me alone” cat’s general attitude about human beings is quite familiar. 
As The World’s Most Interesting Man might say, I don’t always ignore people, but when I do it’s because my available daily minutes for engaging with people have been used up. I am pretty much a leave me alone cat with relatively well-developed social skills.
Back to colors. For some strange reason Jeanne does not demonstrate the same obsession with Facebook personality quizzes that I do, but she was interested enough to take the aura quiz. Hers is blue—unfortunately we neglected to record the description, although it seemed to fit her reasonably well. So I looked elsewhere. After Googling “color moods” and randomly clicking on one of the hundreds of sites instantly available, I learned the following about the psychological properties of blue and yellow:
BLUE: Intellectual.
Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm. Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness.
Blue is the color of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than the physical reaction we have to red. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. It is the color of clear communication.
YELLOW: Emotional
Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity. Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.
The yellow wavelength is relatively long and essentially stimulating. In this case the stimulus is emotional, therefore yellow is the strongest color, psychologically. The right yellow will lift our spirits and our self-esteem; it is the color of confidence and optimism.
Now I’m really confused, since the description of “Blue” sounds very much like me, while “Yellow” sounds a lot like Jeanne (minus the suicide and depression). But perhaps we’ve been together long enough that our colors are beginning to mingle. And we all know what happens when you mix blue and yellow (regardless of which person is which):
GREEN: Balance
Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace. Negative: Boredom, blandness, enervation.
Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the center of the spectrum, it is the color of balance – a more important concept than many people realize.
And I must say that this sounds right. Jeanne has often said that she wants our home to be a place of peace and healing—maybe we are on the way. A certain amount of blandness and boredom is a small price to pay for the privilege of creating a space of harmony, balance, rest and peace in a world that is anything but. When extreme opposites attract and mix, sometimes something cool happens.
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