Self-Help for the Rest of Us
Back when I was in college, the career guidance office was fond of pushing a book called What Color Is Your Parachute?, which was allegedly chock full of helpful advice for planning a career and hunting for a job. I don’t know for sure, as I never read it. I was a carefree, the-future-will-take-care-of-itself kind of guy. Besides, I knew exactly what I was gonna do for a living. I was going to be a journalist. No, wait, a philosopher. No, wait, strike that, I was going to move out to LA and try and break into writing for TV and film. Or did I decide against that? That may have been the week I was going to be a graphic designer. Regardless, I was not big on the whole life planning thing, but I know people who were.
Thing is, they didn’t necessarily follow their plans either. Why? Because life gets in the way. Some other jerk gets promoted even though you did most of the grunt work. The company you work for was counting on an Internet business to invest capital. Your significant other decides that, contrary to his or her previous opinion, yak farming is a preferable substitute to your continued company. Your pet turtle runs away. Other people, in other words, are almost never cooperative with your plans, even though it is clear that your plans are by far the most sensible possible way the world could work out.
There’s actually a very simple reason for this. Other people are morons.
No, actually, that’s not true. Actually, everyone is a genius, and if they only saw things your way, they would certainly defer to your sound logic and reasoning. In fact, they’d arrive at the very same conclusion themselves! So how to explain the apparent idiocy? I realized the answer when reading an issue of Powers a while back. I put the relevant piece of dialogue up on our Quote-a-rama thread, but even then, I did not understand its significance:
“It’s like: How do I know that when I see the color blue — how do I know that you are seeing the same blue I am? It’s one of those questions you just try not to think about–“
The simple truth is, you are not seeing the same blue everyone else is. Color perception is an extremely subjective thing, and even though we can all agree that blue is the color of the sky and green is the color of grass, who knows what shade of what color each of us really means by those words? And these subtle shifts in hue shift the way we look at the world, so that what makes perfect sense to you makes absolutely none to someone who looks at a banana and sees the color you see when you look at an apple.
Having finally cracked this infernal code, I am pleased to announce that I will be publishing my own life-planning guide, entitled What Color Is the Sky in Your World? The book will provide examples and exercises that help you translate from one color scheme to another, along with special color-changing lenses (which I have acquired at a wholesale liquidation discount from an out-of-business 3D glasses manufacturer) that will finally give all of us a common frame of chromatic reference. A few examples of the lessons to be learned from What Color Is the Sky:
- You are a former denizen of Wall Street who gets it into his head that selling books and all sorts of other things on the Internet would make a dandy business. You start the business, everyone loves it, Time names you Man of the Year. Just one problem: you forget to actually make any money in the process, and the value of your company drops 90% and you find yourself deeply in debt. The color of your sky is red — readjust your vision right away, but make sure you’re sitting down when you look at your balance sheet afterward.
- You are an Australian individual prone to saying ‘Crikey’ a lot and shoving your fist down the throats of crocodiles. The color of your sky is a light brown. You’re pretty much harmless, so there’s no rush to change . . . but really, man, those teeth are not bee-you-tee-ful. They’re just damned sharp.
- You are that guy who stands right in front of the entrance to the train and tries to cram your way in while the rest of us are trying to get out. What the heck is your rush, anyway? The color of your sky — chartreuse — is clearly preventing you from realizing that the train will not go anywhere until we all get off. Your blood pressure will thank you for getting that taken care of.
- You are Kathie Lee Gifford and you don’t understand why the ratings for Live! with Regis and Anybody Else have gone up since you left to pursue your other endeavors, including but not limited to your relief efforts for the sweatshop workers who make your clothes for Wal-Mart. Readjust your vision so that the sky is no longer fuchsia, watch a few of your old tapes, and get back to us.
- You are the guy that mugged me last November about 100 feet from a Temple University Police watchtower. You clearly chose your spot well, since the cops never saw you, but you tried to mug a graduate student, the form of life on this planet least likely to have any money. Once the color of the sky in your world is no longer green with yellow stripes, you will hopefully apply your keen planning skills to a more lucrative, and hopefully legal, venture. (You may want to talk to the Man of the Year, while you’re at it.)
- You are Joel Schumacher, director of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. I am still trying to figure out what the devil you’re looking at.
Clearly, we are at the dawn of a new Golden Era (one that will, perhaps, match the brilliance of the sky in Bill Gates’ world), and all it takes is one slight, teensy-weensy, itty-bitty life-altering shift of perspective. It’s a small price to pay, really. So pick up your copy of What Color Is the Sky in Your World? today, and —
What’s that? You want to know what color I see when I look up at the clouds? Blue, of course. Clearly, I have the proper perspective on everything. It’s the rest of you pikers that need to get with the program. So c’mon, get those Visas and MasterCards ready.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.