Focus Light

Hello there! I missed writing in the past few days. And since I haven’t been reading anything either, writing now feels like giving a presentation without any preparation. A late realization: books were extracting my writing juices! A bizarre feeling to experience though.

Lately, I’ve realized that my eyes are unknowingly filtering what they encounter amidst the chaos. I am seeing everything blue. Actually, let me correct that "Something in Blue" is what my eyes are focusing on. You’ll know more about this in a bit. This isn’t a new trait. Ever since I can remember, I’ve filtered out the things I wanted to see. As a kid, I would get scolded for this habit, misunderstood as “absent-mindedness” by others. But observing everything all at once feels exhausting. Why should a poor three-pound-brain remember witless, unnecessary details?

There was this viral reel once — a guy would walk up to people and ask them to check the time on their phone. And then he’d ask, “What’s your battery percentage?” I wish he came to me once. I would have half an hour’s explanation for not answering that right. People who can answer such arduous questions are clearly blessed with extraordinary brain power. Mine prefers selective devotion.

When I say “something in blue” is the highlight right now, I mean things like… shopping carts in the supermarket, blue slippers, the Nandini milk packet, a sticker on the bathroom windowpane, clothes in my wardrobe, partly visible veins under my skin, the LinkedIn app, the stove flame, and more. Blue isn’t even my favorite color. But it seems like my brain is going through mood swings and blue is healing it. A fleeting filter, perhaps… and I’m already curious about the next one.

I feel eased, honestly because my mind is focusing on blue rather than the worrying blues. As if my brain looked at my stress, looked at the sky, and said, “Let’s stick with this shade, shall we?” Maybe it’s trying to calm me down in the most aesthetic way possible…
We all have these strange filters, don’t we? Some people notice only mistakes, some notice only food; and the lucky ones notice love everywhere they go. My eyes have simply chosen blue lately. Calming, harmless, lovely, aesthetic even! A temporary obsession, a weird coping mechanism, or perhaps a tiny reminder that beauty doesn’t always shout, sometimes it just drizzles softly through everyday things.

Maybe this is my brain’s way of telling me it’s fine to filter. To choose what deserves my energy right now. We don’t have to absorb the entire universe like some overworked sponge, it’s already loud enough, thank you. If blue brings me calmness, then blue can stay. And if your current filter is silence, iced coffee, or aggressively ignoring WhatsApp messages… that’s perfectly valid. Our focus shifts with our phases, and that’s simply how a human heart survives without glitching.

This whole filtering business makes me think: maybe being overwhelmed is not a personality trait like people make it sound. Maybe it’s just our mind refusing to attend every clumsy party it’s invited to. Our focus shifts with our phases. Some seasons we collect everything, people, ideas, quotes, heartbreaks. And some seasons, we collect only the shopping cart that is blue.

Because truly, anything on the surface isn’t the full story. You look closer at a flower, there’s a whole ecosystem inside! You look closer at a person, there’s a whole novel they’re hiding! When we dig deeper, the real essence peeks out: the good, the messy, the utterly confusing. And that’s why choosing what we notice shouldn’t be a rushed decision like picking toothpaste at a supermarket. It should come from a calm, subconscious nudge… not panic, not pressure, and definitely not because everyone else is doing it. Selective attention isn’t a flaw, but it’s a soft, intuitive boundary.

Now I want to know, do you also filter life sometimes? Like remembering someone’s green shoelace from 6 months ago but forgetting their birthday? Or noticing the shape of a cloud but not where you kept your keys? If yes, then you’re not alone, most of us are quietly filtering life in ways we don’t even realize.