How Letting Go of Labels Helped Me See Life With More Color
From rigid thinking to curiosity and wonder
“the five colours make a man blind, the five tones make a man deaf, because if you can only see five colours, you’re blind, and if you can only hear five tones, you’re deaf”. -Lao-Tzu
Have you ever felt like the world around you has dulled—like you're seeing the same patterns, hearing the same stories, and moving through life on autopilot? It’s as if everything fits into these neat little boxes, and while that can feel safe, there’s also something unsettling about it. The more we define, categorize, and assume we understand the people and experiences in our lives, the more color seems to drain from them.
We, humans, love boxes. We love to name and define things, often in broad and generalized ways, because that naming and identifying helps us understand our relationship to them. There is (some) beauty in this—in the stories we create, the words we weave together to communicate and connect. Our language forms bridges, allowing others to step into our worlds and perspectives more easily. Through this, we craft meaning, build bonds, and foster belonging.
Yet, as much as this categorization can feel grounding, it can also limit. When we reduce people, cultures, and experiences to limited definitions, we strip away their essence. These intricate, vast, and beautifully unpredictable elements become flattened, narrowed to fit the confines of our assumptions. The richness dissolves into abstraction.
I recall a lecture by Alan Watts where he spoke of meditation. Often, he said, our greatest disturbance in meditation comes from the moment we label a sound as a distraction. The rustle of leaves, the honk of a horn, the chirp of a bird—we name them, and suddenly they are irritants, pulling us away from stillness. But what if we let these sounds exist without attaching meaning? What if the rustle is simply a rustle, not an intrusion but part of the symphony of the present moment? In this space, noise ceases to be disruptive and instead becomes a thread in the larger tapestry of experience.
Watts referenced Lao-Tzu: “The five colours make a man blind, the five tones make a man deaf.” To see only five colours, to hear only five tones, is to miss the infinite spectrum that exists just beyond our frame of perception. When we narrow our awareness to predefined boundaries, we diminish our capacity to truly see and hear the world as it is.
This thought stayed with me, and I began a curious experiment in my life—to resist naming, to loosen the grip of categorization. I approached people, places, and even myself with curiosity rather than assumption. I tried to meet my family, friends, strangers, and even celebrities not as who I believed them to be but as who they might reveal themselves to be, moment by moment.
It was like watching the world bloom anew. Conversations deepened. Nature unfolded with a quiet vibrancy I hadn’t fully noticed before. Colors seemed richer, laughter rang clearer. The everyday became a bit more extraordinary, not because the world had changed, but because I was no longer walking through it on autopilot all the time. By softening the edges of certainty, life became an invitation to wonder.
There is something profoundly liberating about stepping away from the storylines we cling to. When we let go of the need to define, we make space to discover. And in that space, life has a way of surprising us.
Perhaps one of the greatest gift we can offer ourselves is to remain open—to listen for the unheard tones, to seek the unseen hues, to remember that the world is always more than we think it is. Catch yourself with your preconceived ideas and judgements while you are listening to stories, seeing strangers on the street, at your dinner table with your family or partner, towards your coworkers and bosses, and when you look at yourself in the mirror. You may be surprised by how much you think you know but actually don’t - and the curiosity begins.
Much love,
Charlie