For most of my childhood, blue was my favorite color. Even now, as I prop up my fuzzy, blue-socked feet on a blue, spray painted folding chair, and write in a blue folder with a navy blue pencil resting on a blue chalk smudge in the bend of my hand (*take a breath*), I realize that blue really isn't just a color and probably IS still my favorite.
In nature, blue is expansive. Heavy, deep, shifting oceans; thin, napping lakes; wide, airy, hopeful skies; expensive vacation spots with impossibly rich color. Blue is calm, clean, polite, and laid back.
Blue is not "just a color." Walls painted blue can affect one's mood, just as much as a sunny, blue sky. An absence of expected blue, such as in the muddy Mississippi River, or on a dullish, pale gray, rainless day, can subsequently produce an absence of motivation and appreciation (depending on the person of course).
Where would yellow be without blue?
Incapable of making green.
What would water be without blue?
Gross.
Where would the sky be without blue?
Portland.
Blue can get away with being bright without being condemned as inappropriate or too wild. My former rental house was a bright and vibrantly deep blue with white trim; I loved it. It reminded me that a happy home should exist in a cheerful house.
Oh, and where would purple be without blue?
Stuck with pink, that's where.
That alone may be reason enough to celebrate blue.
Blue, with a cape around its neck, a book in one hand and bulging calf muscles poking out from bike shorts, is truly more than a mere, mortal color in my mind.