Through The Colours: Blue Is Calm In The Chaos
Red was life, orange was healing, yellow was sunlight, green was nature. Now we get to blue: serenity.
Serenity is a funny one because it doesn’t just act on demand. You can burn incense, play a chill lo-fi beat, I’m sure there’s an app for it these days, too. But you can still find yourself silently screaming into your pillow at 3AM because your brain decided to replay something stupid you said in 2012.
Sometimes, serenity can sneak up on you. Like the not-silent hush after a festival has ended, when the air is thick with lowered voices, jubilant on their journeys home. Like the sea on a flat summer morning, before swimmers and speedboats arrive en masse, when it’s just you and horizon stretched across your line of sight. Like the moment you realise you don’t need to mask in front of a friend, the weight off your shoulders physically dropping two whole inches.
Blue is serenity, but that doesn’t mean perfection. It’s in the flashes of quiet when you feel like, just for now, I am enough. For me, serenity has been learning that my brain won’t stop being autistic just because I asked it to. It won’t stop being queer just because the world can still get weird about it. Serenity isn’t fixing yourself. It’s being able to sit with yourself and say: actually, I’m fine here.
I used to think of serenity as a destination. That one day, with the perfect job, the perfect home, the perfect rhythm – and then I’d finally be calm. Now I’ve come to know that serenity is more like the sea: always shifting, sometimes stormy, sometimes still, but always there. The trick is in noticing the calm patches when they’re there and not panicking when the waves roll back in.
Blue is also my reminder that peace isn’t personal. It’s a collective. Serenity is knowing the crowd has your back. That you can walk alongside the Pride parade, in spirit or in person, and know you’re not alone. That the quiet you fought for inside of your head for so long can ripple outward into the communities we’re a part of.
Blue is serenity, then. Not permanent, not flawless. Present.
Found in sea breezes, in laughter, in friendships that don’t require explanations. This Pride, I’d like blue to remind me that calm is not the finish line. It’s a colour we can carry with ourselves, even when the noise of life tries to drown us out.
Baryn is an occasional writer with a penchant for quiet corners and long walks through Malta, hunting Pokémon. Obsessed with all things Pocket Monsters, nostalgia and self-reflection, he drifts between the past and daydreams of the future while trying to catch them and live his best life doing so. Join along in the journey @jacxbsen_.
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