Writing about one's favorite color slightly smacks of needing something to write about, but the last time I cracked open a can of Coca-Cola and realized the beautiful can swindled me into a less-than-satisfying taste experience (i.e., my eyes had swindled me), I knew it was time for some analysis. (Not that my eyes haven't swindled me before. Sooner or later, most people find themselves in that relationship...)

Coca-Cola. First aid. The jerseys of the Bulls and Blackhawks. Roses. Ketchup. Strawberries. Santa Claus. A firetruck. A cardinal. A ruby. The Canadian flag. That color--the boldness of it, the fervency--draws my eye and, often, holds it. If we play Sorry! or Settlers of Catan I'm reaching for the red game pieces (and I'm secretly disappointed if I don't get them). But it isn't as though we have a special kinship, me and red. I haven't picked it as a favorite, and I don't even think a favorite color is a thing worthy of thinginess. But I know that it pulls my eye. It interests me, more than the emotional tones of blue, the quirkiness of purple, the nourishing flavor of green, the shocking vibrancy of yellow, or the too-cool-for-school attitude of orange.

Red is a very practical color, mostly for stop signs, stop lights, brake lights, and emergency sirens. Red alerts us to danger. It gets our attention. I think this have something to do with its occurrence in nature. Most of nature is green, brown, or blue. The grass, the dirt, the water, the sky. There are some exceptions to this, like a soothing crimson sunset, a flowering vermilion volcano, or a stunning rusty desert, but the peculiarity of those instances arrest our attention. Mostly, red appears in nature as a detail: a berry on a bush, a bird on a branch, a bug on a begonia.

At this point, I think the responsible blogger would delve into the biology of the eye and the neurology of color experience, but after doing the research (i.e. Wikipedia and four Youtube videos), not only am I not sure it helps me figure out the point or purpose of red, but it makes my pendulum just swing from biology back to phenomenology. I don't care as much how the trick is done as the reasons why I'm dazzled by it.

(That said, the cones in your eyes are the ones that detect color, and 60% of your cones detect only the color red, as opposed to 30% for green and 10% for blue. Every color we see is a combination of these three colors. They send information to the visual cortex in the back of your brain, which then creates the phenomenal experience of color through a process that both neurologists and philosophers are still not entirely sure of and is outside the scope or attention span of this post to dive into, though I warrant it's an interesting question that I'll get to at some point. My focus is the creation of meaning, in particular the meaning the color has when utilized for things like emergency lighting, marketing campaigns, and athletic uniforms, which brings us to...)

There's one other major place red occurs in nature, and that's blood. Bloody blood. Organic petroleum. Whenever you see it it means danger. Something's wrong. That stuff is supposed to stay inside of you. Or red is the tongue, the mouth, and other erogenous zones it would behoove you to pay attention to. 

I think it's this association, imprinted upon our brains through millions of years of evolutionary trial and error, that gives red its meaning. Red is urgency, red is vitality, red is passion, love, action. Red is pumping through us. Red seethes; red pulses. Stop signs and brake lights shock us awake, yes, but Valentine's Day cards arouse our hearts and bold sports jerseys incite action. I think it's because we are all blood on the inside, and when it isn't blood, the red we see is food and flowers and fire and flirtations, things that propel nature's animation. Because whether it's hair, lipstick, coals, a flag, a convertible, or a tin can with sugary brown liquid inside, red grabs you. Red grits its teeth. Red stands on the edge of a cliff staring into the sunset with the wind through its hair. And then red hugs you and won't ever let you go

The way I choose to look at it now is that if someone clicks Like, it meant I either added something to their day or they wanted to support me. Either way, I'll take it. But now, with my revamped posting standards, I'm also doing my part, making sure I'm not throwing slop up there that's not nearly as clever, insightful, or helpful as I thought it was. That was me acting from my ego instead of thinking about the context, which is one of the central issues to being a good writer and why it's important to have trusted readers. They keep your blind spots in check.
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A Facebook post is a third-person communication; you're putting a message out there in public for a whole group. This means the validation of a Like is also a public action in a public space. Sometimes everyone sees you make a good joke, sometimes you make a post that dies a sad, hugless death.

And that is painful. You think this comment is good, that it's going to reach people and touch them or make them laugh, and yet it just sits there, friendless, like an echo in a cave, like a voice calling for someone just hoping they'll answer. And when that answer doesn't come, you reflect it upon yourself, you identify with the lack of validation. You become the lonely comment, which is a hell of a lot easier than doing that on stage. Comedians deserve respect for their resolve.

A psychological trick, sure, but one that's easy to get duped by. The key is not needing that validation. Learning how to be happy with getting your writing/pictures/ideas out there simply because you put thought into it and felt like the thought/photo/link should be shared with the world. It doesn't matter who else likes it as long as you like it.

And that brings me back to number two up top: the number of Likes you receive for a given post. I just watched a Frontline where high school students where raving over how many Likes this picture got vs. that picture, as if it really matters (we're pretending this post means I'm above this at this point...). But a friend recently told me that we're responsible for telling people how we feel and what we need, and anything they actually give us should be considered a gift.

So to follow that reasoning, any Facebook Like should be considered a gift. None are necessary, but even getting one is a cool thing. My stupid joke got Liked by one person. If I free myself from expectations, I can be grateful for that. Like.

I love the song "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips. Sometimes you pick your favorites; sometimes they pick you. This one's a no-brainer for me, and not just because of how heartfelt and honest it is, and not just because so few works of art can stretch you to the depths of your sadness and joy at the same time, but also because the title question doesn't get answered. It's presenting a path of inquiry for you, the listener, to explore, and the beauty in that lies in the fact that realization--the action of realizing, the verb "to realize"--is a process with no destination. The fruits of its explorations are limitless. This makes the extra question mark at the end of the song title a nice little touch.