When Billy first asked me what color the dress was I had no idea what he was getting at, but I quickly said, "Mustard yellow and white." (Gold is a nicer description, I think.) He responded, "It's black and blue," and I thought "What kind of dumb mind game is he trying to play?" I was instantly annoyed, which for those of you who don't know, is my default emotion. I am a legendary eye-roller.
It took many a website to show either of us that the other wasn't completely insane. One website showed us the original dress on sale, but I was convinced that it was just the same dress in another color scheme and someone out there had a vendetta against me (and all of those like me who understood that the dress was in the shadows of a tent in a very sunny outdoor market). Another site showed up that if you color pick all the colors in the dress, they are shades of brown/tan/yellow and some blue (i.e. white in the shade, hello!!!!). Yet Billy clung to the fact that it was at least blue, even though it was no where near the deep blue he was seeing in the original.
Things were getting tense.
Then Eve walked in and saw black and blue, and Billy smiled, and I felt attacked. (I, apparently, feel attacked quite easily... need to work on this.)
Eventually, I tilted my screen and saw the dress as black and blue. After that, I was able to see it as black and blue with the screen at a normal incline. Well, most of the time.... there were still a few times that my original color scheme came back, and I started feel legitimately crazy that I could see the same photo is two very different, yet reasonable, ways.
But honestly... who cares about a dress or a color scheme or an internet debate? It's fleeting. A crazy thing we'll all move past once the weekend flies by. Except, really, we'll go about our lives doing the exact same thing with pretty much everything else. And I only hope that this lesson on perspective and fact will teach us something about how we treat those we disagree with.
The fact is that the dress was black and blue. But wait! The fact also was that there was no black in the picture and that the lace embellishments were actually tans and browns, aka golds.
The thing is that some of us looked at the colors and corrected for the lace. We saw colors that indicated gold, and corrected the blue to be shaded white. Others corrected for the dress. They saw washed out blue and corrected the browns to be washed out black. We looked at the facts, but saw two different, yet equally reasonable images.
So, where's the life lesson? It's this: If we truly want to move forward and turn disagreements into discussions, we have to be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to our conversation partners and stop assuming that people are crazy for believing something that makes no sense to us personally.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard disagreements devolve into statements such as "That makes no sense at all!" (or worse... "You make no sense at all!")
Could it be that sometimes we enter into discussions with others who may have a completely reasonable way of thinking something? Even if it doesn't make sense to us? Just because something doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean it doesn't make sense at all.
And maybe you're like me and want to say, "Well, but the dress was black and blue!" Yes, I understand that. I admit that I was technically wrong with my conclusion. But all of you blue and blackers out there... can you admit that I was still reasonable?
