About GG

In case you wonder why I called this blog “The Green Glasses”, here is the story.

Before my first visit to the USA, I went through an orientation class, where other high school exchange students like me were taught about the American culture to help us integrate better into the US. One of the lessons was about how our perspective would change after spending a year in the U.S. To explain how such change would occur, our teachers used a metaphor of looking at life through the lenses of different cultures. We look at the world through the “yellow” glasses of our culture; then we would look at life through American “blue” glasses. In the end, the yellow and blue glasses would merge and turn into “green” glasses.

I had an inspiration to write recently but I quickly realized that I wouldn’t want to write just about my mixed Ukrainian-American worldview. That is not what my brain craves right now, and that is not how I operate. I cannot stick to one subject because I get bored with it pretty quickly. Instead, I decided to take what I usually love doing – obtaining new knowledge – and practice doing it more mindfully. The color green suddenly became a symbol of refreshing new ideas and of healthy mind exercising. I also like green. My eyes are green. I love gardening and have a green thumb. And that is enough for me to stick to the green color.

The “green” part is explained, but what about the “glasses” part?

This one is kind of self-explanatory, but I’ll write this down anyway to remind myself what the thesis of my blog is. As my husband often reminds me before I write anything, “You have to have your thesis first. You need to know where you are going with your writing. Otherwise, you’ll wander mindlessly without a direction.” I don’t have a problem with some wandering, but my life did prove that a thesis is important. After all, as a planner, I like to have some directions prepared before I start a journey. So, now that I side-tracked a little onto the path that explains why a thesis is important, let’s get back to the thesis itself: the meaning of glasses.

Looking through a glass gives this feeling of observation of the world without having to engage with it, kind of like when you look at the outside world through a window. Sometimes, it’s good to just read, observe, and understand, but not make a judgment or jump to any conclusions right away.

Looking through glasses or through a lens means that one focuses on a subject.

Lenses can be colored, just like our thoughts might be colored with emotions, cultural backgrounds, or experiences. Lenses can magnify, and I’d like to think that the analysis type of blog posts will use this function of a lens.

The glass reflects, and I’d like to learn how to reflect better. This one requires slowing down, looking inside, and really being honest with oneself, and that’s a pretty difficult thing for me to do. The maximizing and efficient I often try to reach a quick conclusion/solution to implement so that I can act, not sit around and think. I’d like to train myself to slow down enough to become very good at reflecting. 

Thus, the Green Glasses blog is going to be a physical space that forces my brain to slow down my greedy information consumption, and instead helps me focus, observe, analyze, and reflect on information and knowledge so that I can extract new, refreshing, and meaningful pieces of wisdom.