My Favorite Color By: Ashley Lasko

I am an indecisive person, specifically the kind that will list every pro and con and compare everything before deciding what to do. This has helped me in some scenarios, but it usually ends with me spending 15 minutes to decide to do what I had originally planned. When I was younger, I’d stare straight up, debating my choices for half an hour; this inevitably drove my parents insane. I’ve gotten better as I’ve matured, picking out random half-decent outfits for the next day (with an exceptional lack of fashion sense) and just selecting a book or project to prevent the otherwise inevitable 30 minute period where I stare blankly at both options until something clicks.

However, as you’d assume from the phrase “I’ve gotten better”, I’ve still got a long way to go. There’s the all-too-real student struggle of whether ‘A’ or ‘C’ is the “more” correct answer or having your entire ice cream size, flavor, and toppings picked out to discover you’ve missed a whole separate board of the daily specials. Which, unless you're the person who orders the same flavor at every ice cream stand, will cause you rethink your entire order.

My point among this two-paragraph intro is that decisions are hard. It’s difficult to forever say “yes” or “no”. However, do we really need to have an answer for every decision? Obviously you can't go through life with deciding your end goal or what you need to do to get there, but there are little decisions along the way that I feel fit into the category “Do I really need to answer this?”.

One such question, which is the only reason I came up with this blog idea in the first place, is “what is your favorite color?”. You probably haven’t heard this since you spoke it yourself when in grade school, unless you have a constant connection with a younger generation. I don’t know how most people respond to the pestering of an 8 year old, but I immediately go to pink or blue. Pink because that was my color when I was 8 and blue because it’s blue. I don’t know why everyone likes the color blue, it apparently “looks cool”, but that’s them and not me.

So, as children don’t tend to do but they sometimes do which doesn’t make sense but it’s hard to tell if children actually do this or the media is portraying something different than it actually is which they probably are, I started to look at the question with a deeper meaning. What would my favorite color be, other than because it “looks cool”? After taking a few art classes to escape life, I've learned that different colors represent wealth, maturity, intelligence, and nearly any other trait you can think of. This made picking a favorite color easy; I just pick a color that matches my personality and then the larger than life problem was solved. There was no point to the introduction of this blog. Anyone can pick one thing or another with enough dedication.

Except, as indicated by the paragraphs below, my quest for a perfect color was far from over. No one is just smart or just happy or just angry. You can’t define someone by one trait. So, I still had no idea what my favorite color was. I decided that I would think on this a bit longer before deciding on a color. Despite how long it would take, despite the many bus rides staring out the window and the constant wondering, I would figure this out. Then, I came to the realization that answers the title of my blog.

Why do I need a favorite color? I can do what I’ve done for four or five years and simply tell those 8-year-olds that I think pink is an awesome color. They won’t think much of it, they’ll simply go into a tangent of why they love purple the best, since it was the newest pop figure’s hair color (or something along those lines). So, why did I choose to narrate my quest for the best color anyway? Especially if it ended basically where it began?

It highlights the idea that we don’t need to decide every little thing, and nothing has to be a favorite. You don’t need to have you favorite dish at that one restaurant or pick a Harry Potter character over the others, because (to me) one J. K. Rowling's biggest strengths of her novel was her characterization. Maybe you do have a favorite color, or maybe Neville Longbottom is undoubtedly your favorite character. We can have our favorites. However, I think we should be able to say we can’t decide on a favorite with as much appreciation and as little pressure as someone who knows what they like best.