Can We Assign Color to Our Feelings?” – A Study in Human Hue

Sean Goh
3 minutes ago
4 min read

There are days when blue doesn’t feel like a color. It feels like a memory.

a Rene Margritte- style painting depicting someone who feels a grey sense of loneliness

I asked my friend a question the other day. We were lost in one of those rare conversations that don’t try to arrive anywhere — the kind that walk themselves around, barefoot and curious. I asked: “Do you think we can assign feelings to a color?”

She paused, the way people pause when you ask them something too human for a fast reply. “I think… sometimes the feeling comes first. But sometimes, the color helps us remember how to feel it.” (paraphrased)

That stayed with me. It still is. It's the kind of thought that does not come up very often but lingers in the back of our (at least my) minds. The kind of thought the everyday mundane mind finds a little hard to grasp, often a little too affraid to reveal itself thinking it might weird out the rest of the mundane world. No matter what, it still lingers.

The Color of Loneliness Might Not Be What You Think

Colors don’t come pre-labeled. We do that. Quietly, unconsciously, in our own "weird" little way. And maybe that’s why it matters — because in a world that constantly asks us to name our feelings, sometimes we need a different language. Sometimes, the color names it for us. It just comes.

Red: The Tender Violence of Feeling Too Much

Not just anger. Not just lust. Red is the color of the heart ripping open at the seam and still choosing to beat. Psychological studies often used by big companies like McDonalds cite that the color red makes one feel hungry, hungry for food. Something to fill the stomach with. We have to remember that tests are taken by a sample of a population where we don't know for sure how their minds are wired. After all, the margin of error exists for a reason. But, remains an unknown.

The color red is somewhat the blush that betrays you. The flash of shame in a memory you thought you buried. The way your chest floods when someone says your name like it matters.

Red doesn’t knock. It erupts.

And if you’ve ever cried hard enough to forget what started it, you’ve felt red — not seen it, felt it — raw and beautiful in its refusal to numb.

Green: The Ache of Becoming

Green is what it feels like to grow. Not the Instagram "woohoo thank you for the 10K" kind. The kind that makes your joints hurt. The kind that makes you lonely.

It’s the shade of healing that doesn’t show up on skin. The envy that tastes like longing, not hate. The way you look at someone and think, I wish I knew how to be that free.

But green is also the feeling of trying again. Even when it hurts. Especially then. Sure, it's "go". But this time, go on, give it a try.

Yellow: The Smile.

Everyone wants to be yellow. Everyone says they are. The secular world wants you to be yellow. If you're anything but yellow, you're not "okay". Since when did the benchmark for a decent way to feel become so high?

But yellow is complicated. It’s joy, yes — but also the pressure to perform it. To wear it on your sleeve like armor. To smile when the room expects you to. Everyone is smiling right there and then. The image sticks in your mind like gum to the soles of your shoes. But are they all really... yellow?

Yellow is the sunlight you miss when you live too long in your own head. It’s the friend who jokes their way through pain. It’s loud laughter in a quiet sadness. The warmth. Oh, the warmth that we all yearn and strive to obtain!

But still — it’s beautiful. Because yellow doesn’t give up. It shows up. Even when it’s tired. Yellow is right there. Grab it.

Grey: The Dense Emptiness.

Ever felt sort of... "?"? That's what grey is. Much like a "grey" area, it's one which we can't quite define outselves; one that requires another grey-engulfed individual to identify and surface. It's one which we don't quite understand, yet feel like we are deep in it. Much like we don't quite know what's in the air when we're in the subway or in the middle of a meadow. It's that sort of unknown when it feels so neutral you barely notice until the sun sets on the horizon, until the director says "CUT!", until you catch the allergies from all the polen.