Feeling the Fact of what it means to be a Person

Colors. When I was six there were two important questions I would ask a new friend when I was in Kindergarten: 'How old are you?' and 'What is your favorite color?'. I remember always being surprised at them being about the same age and that it was the most amazing and coolest thing if we both had the same favorite color. It was like, we are friends because we have the same favorite color. We both liked the same color and so we could be friends. It was like we had everything in common because we had a favorite color in common.

Now, when we as adults or even young adults make new friends, or meet new people we don't really find it necessary to ask the other person their favorite color or their age. We don't find such things appropriate, or it really just never occurs to us. What is it about being age six, that it is such a high priority to share the same favorite color with a friend?

Perhaps when adults meet other adults, they are more focused on: Who are you?, what do you do?, Why should I know you? and admittedly, How can I make you like me?

When a child meets another child, perhaps the question of asking "What is your favorite color?" is most natural to a child because color is something so wonderful to many of them. It is something that they see and perhaps is one of the first things that they naturally form an opinion over. There are so many colors, all six or eight of them in the crayon box, and they feel their best when they see things of that particular color. Having things that is their favorite color makes them feel.

It made me feel beautiful to have a purple dress. It made me feel happy to have a purple crayon bank because it was purple. It made me feel special to have a Lisa-Frank bright pink and rainbow-colored merry-go-round horse folder in Kindergarten. Those rainbow colors, that color pink, and purple, made me feel beautiful, special, happy and excited to be alive.

Those colors that I liked, made me feel the reality of who I am. They moved me, and I experienced, I felt the truth. I felt that I was beautiful and special, that I am most me when happy and excited to be alive.

Perhaps although subconsciously, young children ask each other their favorite colors so they can know what makes the other person themselves. Perhaps they are asking and wondering, what makes you you? Liking a specific color does not define you by what you do, or where you live or work, or believe, but by what you like to see and what brings you joy. It reveals a truth about who you are because you exist and can see. (I wonder if blind people have favorite sounds or smells in which  they identify themselves with?) Liking a certain color reveals a certain order, a world view such that when the child finds another who likes to see things the same way they do, they feel safe, and familiar and connected.

As adults, we ask questions to place the other person in a context of the world we know: Where do you live? Where do you work? What do you do? What do you like to do? All of which we do probably quite quickly, either simply by the context of the meeting, (Job related, family related, church related..ect) or by asking and listening.

This is all fine and good but there is perhaps something missing in many adult introductions that we have lost from our childhood. Another person is not just where they lived, what they have done, or how they relate to you in a job environment to accomplish a task, or how they relate to you in the family, what they believe or how they act. There is more I think. When one meets a new person, there stands someone that is more than what we initially see and know of them.

When meeting a new person, do we ever ask, or wonder quietly inside ourselves,"What is your favorite color?"