The Color of Life

Our bodies and ourselves - and the question of why

Mar 02, 2025

multicolored wall in shallow focus photography — Photo by Robert Katzki on Unsplash

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About a month ago, I explored the journey of Bryan Johnson (Get Busy Living), specifically his overriding emphasis on longevity. I noticed this past week that Johnson, in the next step of what can only ever be a never ending series of steps, has moved his “office” into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to experiment with high levels of oxygen according to a particular protocol. As I said then, I don’t know how effective all of these steps are or will be, but making these (or any) steps our purpose mistakes keeping our bodies alive with life. For some reason, one I suppose I hope to consider in this essay, I thought of Johnson as I explored the world of Oliver Sacks. This exploration came through a group of people I was a part of reading through a number of his works and exploring his life, then sharing what we wanted to share from that experience as we all gathered together in an event called Curious Immersions. These events are part of the efforts of The Ideas Institute, a St. Louis area non-profit that I recommend.

Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who wrote extensively about many of his patients, specifically those whose maladies of the brain shined a light on what it means to be a person - both for them and for us. This writing took the form of literary case histories, full of insights gained through Dr. Sack’s deep connection with these patients. The first case history from the book An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is called “The Case of the Colorblind Painter” and serves as a good illustration of this dynamic between brain, self, and life. This painter was, at the time, 65 years old and had built a career as a successful artist. A car accident resulted in a severe concussion and with some sort of brain injury which, after he had recovered in seemingly all other ways, had rendered him completely colorblind.

There are two areas of exploration in just about all of these cases. The first is how each patient grew to or struggled with understanding their malady and how it impacted their life. Mr. I. (as the patient is called in the book) had lost not only his ability to see color, but because the part of his brain (and the part of our brains) that processed color had been damaged, he could not remember what “red” was. So even if tomato soup was hard to eat because it appeared to be black, he could get little relief by closing his eyes, because his mental image of tomato soup was also black. He had been unusually attuned to color, even for an artist and could recall the names and the numbers of the colors in the Pantone chart he had used. All of this had been lost, while his experience of the world he had always lived in was completely changed.

Mr. I. could no longer bear to go to museums and galleries or to see colored reproductions of his favorite pictures. This was not just because they were bereft of color, but because they looked intolerably wrong, with washed-out or “unnatural” shades of grey (photographs in black and white, on the other hand, were much more tolerable). This was especially distressing when he knew the artists, and the perceptual debasement of their work interfered with his sense of identity - this, indeed, was what he know felt was happening with himself.
Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars, page 28

In Dr. Sacks’ essay, we see how Mr. I. came to adjust to his new condition. He came to accept it, but then more than accept it. In time, he flourished in his new condition, his artistic self redeemed in this redirection. And Mr. I. can be, if we let him, a window for ourselves. What about our ‘maladies', our brokenness, our limitations? How can I think of myself as just another version of Mr. I.? As having a brokenness that must be accepted, lived with, redeemed? I can testify that as I grow older, my physical self, including my brain I am sure, seems to betray the “real” me - the platonic ideal of myself - smart, wise, adept, agile - that I, probably falsely, remember myself, or still think of myself, as being. But of course the betrayed me is the real me. The fully realized version of myself, I believe and have written of elsewhere, awaits - as it has always awaited. Still, I can work toward redemption now. Which I may not be focused on if I lived my life as if I was the platonic ideal of myself. Or, if I lived as Bryan Johnson does, as if I should serve the collection of my organs merely for the purpose of further existence. This is the first area of exploration.

A painting of the brain inspired by (and painted at) the Curious Immersions event - February 23, 2025 - The Ideas Institute

The second combines an understanding of brain science with deep philosophical, anthropological, ontological, epistemological, even, for me at least, theological questions. The question “what is color?” arises from the case of Mr. I. Is color a phenomenon consisting of light waves of varying frequencies (what you might read in an 8th grade science book or high school physics book)? Is color part of the external world - I think this is how we normally understand it, the tomato soup is ‘red’, that is a property of the soup itself - or is color ‘created’ in our brains? And if color is merely the creation of our brains, is that also true of virtually everything else we experience? Is reality created in our brains? And, if so, if our brains are damaged is reality changed?

We experience all of reality as something mediated through our bodies - it is the way we experience anything - seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, perceiving. But is that what reality “is”? The famous question “if a tree falls in the woods and if there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” was raised by a participant - with the answer given as ‘no’, since sound is created in our brains. That is one true way of looking at it, the thing we perceive as ‘sound’ is created in our brains, after our ears receive sound waves from our environment and our brains process them. And if there is no one there to ‘create’ sound in this way, then it does not make a sound. But is that the only way of looking at it? Or, perhaps, could we ask, is God always the observer? always listening? always there? I think yes, but whatever we make of this question, we aren’t really talking about our brains or sound waves anymore.

Another participant in the discussion raised the most important question: Is love simply a physical phenomenon we experience through our bodies, or is there more? Is ‘love’ merely an evolved physical response in order to further the survival of the species - bringing men and women together and binding them to their children? We again are no longer in the realm of light frequency or sound waves. The neuroscientist who was a helpful part of our discussion bravely answered the question - and she was very helpful throughout the evening. But, respectfully, this is not a question that a neuroscientist has any more insight into than do you or I. This thing we experience as love is experienced in our bodies - our brains, our guts, our glands, our skin. But if it is more, then it is only mediated through these parts of ourselves - and is really spiritual, transcendent, eternal.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I John 4:8

I hope it is not hard to guess my answer to the question. If God is love, and if God loves us and calls us to love each other - we have pretty quickly moved past our brains with all of their limitations, damages, and betrayals. We have moved to something more like meaning and purpose. We are here to love God and to love other people, to understand, to extend grace, to be present for - however we are experiencing the physical world. This, as do all the partial redemptions conveyed in Oliver Sacks’ stories, points to what is outside ourselves, to a purpose that is beyond our physicality - that will, I believe, outlive our physicality, however well we tend to our collection of organs.

The question ‘Who am I?’ is danced around throughout all of Dr. Sacks’ case histories and throughout his life. Am I my brain only? No - and I am sure Dr. Sacks would agree. I believe who I am is bound up in why I am here, part of which is to experience God’s love and to convey that love to others. Who I am is bound up in who I am connected to, responsible to, responsible for … not only outside myself metaphysically, but beyond myself to the people I share a life and a planet with.