Choosing a Colour

Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply

I grew up in a world that felt clear.

My father was tall, dark, principled. He believed a person was only as good as their word — and lived as if that were measurable, visible, non-negotiable. I was taught early to think for myself, to question what I was told, to weigh ideas rather than accept them by default.

In hindsight, I was being trained in something older than opinion:

the habit of judgment.

So when I was young, the world looked black and white.
Right and wrong.
True and false.
Keep your word — or don’t.

It was clean.
Serious.
And, as life eventually taught me, incomplete.

When the Lines Blur

As my world widened, the lines began to soften. People were complex. Motives tangled. Context mattered. I entered what I thought was maturity: explanation, nuance, justification.

Everything became grey.

Grey felt intelligent.
You could explain anything there.
Critique everything.
Judge endlessly — without ever having to choose.

The Seduction of Technicolour

Then came the next shift — the one that masquerades as wisdom.

“The world isn’t black and white. It’s technicolour.”

And suddenly judgment itself became suspect.

Who was I to say pink was better than blue?
Who was I to prefer one way of living over another?
Who was I to choose at all?

Acceptance replaced discernment.
Tolerance replaced orientation.
Preference became prejudice.

This is where something subtle broke.

In trying to accept every colour, I stopped forming my own.

I allowed ways of being into my life — relationships, expectations, norms — that didn’t fit me, didn’t nourish me, didn’t honour me.

They hurt me.
They eroded parts of me.
They asked me to become someone else — and called it growth.

All in the name of being open.

Acknowledging difference is not the same as adopting it.

Judgment Is Not Rejection

What finally shifted wasn’t rebellion or withdrawal.

It was recognition.

The realisation that acknowledging difference is not the same as adopting it.

I could see blue.
Admire blue.
Respect blue where blue belongs.

And still choose pink.

Pink is not superior to blue.
It simply belongs here — shaping the life I am actually responsible for living.

This is where the older language becomes useful again.

What Adler calls judgment is not condemnation or criticism. It is the capacity to weigh, to discern, and then to decide — after understanding.

Critical thinking questions.
Judgment integrates and chooses.

Without that final step, we remain suspended — informed, tolerant, and unformed.

What Education Was Meant to Form

This is why liberal education, in its original sense, was never about information or credentials.

It was about forming the inner capacity to choose wisely in a complex world — not retreating to absolutes, and not dissolving into permissiveness either.

Judgment, properly formed, doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t flatten the world into binaries.
And it doesn’t demand we accept everything.

It says:

I see what is.
I understand the range.
And now I choose where I stand.

That choice is not cruelty.
It is not fear.

It is adulthood.

Choosing Without Erasing Ourselves

When people lose the ability to choose — deliberately, responsibly — freedom thins out. It becomes noise. Reaction. Drift.

I’m no longer interested in living in black and white.
I won’t return to grey.
And I won’t surrender myself to technicolour.

I will choose my colour.

And I will trust that a world made up of located people — people who know where they stand and why — is steadier, kinder, and more humane than one where no one is allowed to choose at all.

I’m here, at the table, continuing this conversation.

You’re welcome to read from this place too.

Closing Invitation

So perhaps the work is not to accept every colour —
but to choose one consciously.
To stand somewhere.
To live from it.
And to let other colours exist without needing to erase yourself.

If you’ve been living in grey — confused, over-extended, quietly compromised — this is your reminder:

Judgment is not cruelty.
It is how a person comes home to themselves.

Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply.

This essay is part of the Conversations reading journey.