The Mantis Shrimp cannot actually see more colors than a human being— but they can see more light. I have always envied them for both this ability and the original myth. What a lovely story for someone to tell about you. That you can see more color in the universe.

As a little girl, believing in this myth, I would spend long hours trying, fruitlessly, to imagine what these extra colors might be like. But how can one imagine an entirely new color? Impossible! You might as well try to will yourself into suddenly understanding Swahili. Still, I tried, pleading with the limited artist’s palette in my mind. Would it be some new mix of pink and purple, my 8-year-old self’s favorite colors? But I could picture that, so that must not be it. Would it be some strange yellow, with hints of blue? But again— that existed, findable with the little eyedropper icon on the MS Paint color wheel. Tell me, Mantis Shrimp! I would plead. What do you see?!

Notably, though, I never resented them this ability to see this new color. Only ever admired, and wished they would let me in on the magic.

Now, years and debunked myths and new favorite colors later, I find myself unexpectedly in the Mantis Shrimp’s shrimpy little shoes. I still can’t see a new color, or the nine extra wavelengths of light, but I can see something that seemingly no one else can. And, surprisingly, I find myself just as frustrated as before, this time at my inability to explain the magnificence of this color to someone who is unable to picture it.

Actually, no. That’s an inaccurate analogy. I am trying to describe this phenomenal color, these dazzling lights and all they illuminate, to another Mantis Shrimp, scuttling along the ocean floor with me, but that Mantis Shrimp has its eyes closed, bumping into seaweed and shells like a tiny shrimpy bumper car, and it has its perfect little pink shrimpy fingers stuck in its ears, little shrimpy tongue singing la la la la la to drown me out. 

I find myself just as stumped as I was as a little girl, sitting on my bed trying to coax this new color into emerging from the rainbow behind my eyelids— but this time at a fellow shrimp’s unwillingness to embrace the magic gifted to you. 

It’s not that I don’t sympathize. No matter how beautiful I promise it is, it is scary, undoubtedly, to brace yourself to see the world in this new way, to let in all this light, more light than you have ever seen before. It may blind you at first, you don’t know. And once you blink and blink and blink and your little shrimp mouth drops open in awe of all you see, you, too, may be frustrated— even terrified— when you try to explain to others what it is that you now see and they can’t comprehend. They call you crazy, call you a fool. It would be easier to keep living with eyes closed— though I don’t think John Lennon had the Mantis Shrimp in mind when he was writing Strawberry Fields Forever— but once you see the world for its true colors, well. How could you ever live, ever love, any other way? 

But I am finding my little shrimpy words can only go so far. I try and try and try, just as I did when I was small, to articulate how stunning an array of light this world contains, if only you open your eyes, praying that one day I’ll find just the right combination of words, the right notch on the color wheel, to inspire you to join me in the light. It’ll be so worth it, I promise, worth everything, no more fumbling along in the dark, no more uncertainty or confusion, just possibility and magic and light, light, light to make the shadows dance. 

But I cannot open your beautiful shrimpy eyes, blue and bottomless as the ocean itself, for you. I can only offer my hand, to guide you along, keep you safe, keep you from bonking into any more unsuspecting crabs, until you can’t wait to see all there is before us.