Seeing Life In Color

Being home for my final winter break of college, I found myself growing . . . exponentially. In screen time, that is.

Within the first week, my hours on my phone had ballooned. I’ve joked about “brain rot” before, but this time, I was living it.

So I did something radical. I heard that putting your phone in Greyscale dampens the dopamine rush from mindless scrolling.

(Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → Greyscale… you’ll thank me later.)

With colors drained from my screen and social media deleted, I set off to embrace the olden days: a phone that was just a phone. I felt accomplished, ready to unplug, ready to be. . . uninterested.

By the third night of our beach vacation, I was reading my book as the sun sank low, spilling light across the waves. I looked up and froze. One of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen: fiery reds on one side, soft pastels of pink and purple on the other.

Instinctively, I reached for my phone. But black and white could not capture the moment. I re-enabled color and glanced at my photo. The apps on my home screen flashed bright, almost painfully vivid. And I realized: in my attempt to escape color, I had forgotten how breathtaking it truly is.

Life works the same way. Sometimes, we don’t notice the beauty surrounding us until we step away. We don’t notice the colors, the moments, the people, until we’ve been without them for a while.

Stepping back isn’t losing—it’s remembering. It’s seeing the ordinary as extraordinary, the everyday as brilliant, and the world in full, radiant color.