Steve greeted me with a high five.

It turns out my favourite colour is the same as his.  Yellow.  High five.

A day or so later a link arrived from Steve for Albert Espinosa’s The Yellow World, in which the author describes his ‘way of living, of seeing life, of nourishing yourself with the lessons that you learn from good moments as well as bad ones.’  What is most remarkable is that Espinosa struggled for ten years with cancers which took a leg, a lung and part of his liver.

If you’ve been to my  home, you’ll know it’s painted yellow – not the outside, the inside, but it would be good to have a yellow outside too.  As I’m typing this morning I’m wearing a yellow T-shirt, so you might say I heavily lean towards yellow.

For me, yellow is about openness and choice.  These are both hard or robust words and more.*  I think yellow is a hard-working-colour.  Yellow can be thought of as a bit of a luxury and has to work hard to be noticed and included.

Openness is tough word which does the hard work of suspending judgement because there’s always more to know about people, about the world, and about ourselves.  Choice is a tough word because it means we can’t blame anyone or anything – it’s our choice (or, lots of little choices).

Choice is also about freedom. Not the kind of freedom to do whatever we want to – the world is way more complex than that – the kind of choice which allows us to respond with goodness and rightness and kindness no matter what happens to us and around us.

Yellow also used to be what you were called if someone thought you a coward.  I think yellow is a very brave colour.

(*They feel like antifragile words for me – words which allow us to grow not matter what – see Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile for more.)