The Dress: Perception, Illusion, and Fun
Ten years ago, the internet (and the minds of vision scientists) exploded after a woman posted a photo on Facebook of the striped dress she planned to wear to her daughter’s wedding. Was the dress white-and-gold or black-and-blue? People disagreed.
With most optical illusions, I can make my eyes flip between two interpretations (duck or rabbit, vase or faces) but I can’t manage to see the dress as black-and-blue—its actual colors. This single photograph prompted an intense flurry of research to figure out why people saw different colors. The issue seems to arise from different assumptions a brain makes about lighting conditions. Is the dress shown in natural light, artificial light, or in shadow? Is it lit from the front or back? Brains make different guesses.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
I’m always interested to watch how creative ideas spread. For instance, years ago, when I was talking to a judge for a major literary prize, I asked him if he saw any patterns in the fiction he was reading. He said, “David Mitchell is a major influence.” I love David Mitchell’s work, but I was surprised to learn that—then it made perfect sense. Recently I’ve noticed that the haunting theme song for the TV show Succession seems to be influencing the music of podcasts. Music in the podcasts Search Engine and The Jeselnik & Rosenthal Vanity Project both reminded me of Succession.
I went to an event at the JCC to hear an excellent talk between my friends Dani Shapiro and Ruth Franklin about Ruth’s new book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank. In the lobby, I enjoyed the display on “Pareidolia.” When we view any face-like pattern, we activate the brain’s fusiform face area, the part of the visual system that specializes in facial recognition. Our brains search for faces so eagerly that we sometimes see faces where they don’t exist. I loved these photos of faces popping out of unexpected places.
One thing I know about myself: I need a lot of time in which I can let my mind wander. One reason I go to the Met every day is that it’s a place where I don’t talk, I don’t write, I don’t read, I don’t listen—I just wander around, noticing things and letting my mind off its leash. So I was interested to come across the article “Here’s why you should let your mind wander—and how to set it free.”
I have two excellent projects going in 2025. In “Operation Knicks Knowledge,” I’m experimenting to see if I can make myself take an interest in the NYC basketball team, the Knicks. (Spoiler alert: I can!) I’m also following Simon Haisell’s slow read of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. For both projects, I find a similar challenge: mastering the many names of single figures. Just as I’ve had to learn that Karl-Anthony Towns, Kat, and 32 all refer to the same person, I have to remember that Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov, Pierre, and Petrushka are one man.
I love a museum, and I love the sense of smell, so of course I was fascinated to read the article “Follow your nose to the next museum exhibit.” Interesting scents add so much interest and depth to an experience.
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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 520
Very Special Episode! Ask Us Anything, Part I
INTERVIEW
Catherine Price
Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist and bestselling author of the newly revised and updated How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
My #1 suggestion would be to “break up” with your phone—which is my term for creating a healthier relationship with technology that keeps what you love and reduces or eliminates what you don’t. I say this because smartphones came into our lives so quickly (and have pervaded our lives so thoroughly!) that most of us have never thought about what we want our relationships with them to look like. As a result, they’re intruding upon our most treasured moments and relationships (and making us feel exhausted, stressed, and burned out).
I have a full 30-day phone breakup plan in my book, How to Break Up With Your Phone (now fully revised and updated!) but one easy and fun way to start is to write a “break up letter” to your phone. You can take whatever tone you want – loving, excited, disappointed, regretful, angry, a combination of the above – whatever feels right. Be sure your letter includes details about specific things you’d like to change. It might sound like a silly exercise, but I’ve been surprised to see how deep people’s responses can get. For example, here’s one that I included in my book:
“Dear Phone: You fill my head with so much stuff I can’t hear my own thoughts. That’s the thing I resent the most. Why should you get to dictate what I think about, and when? I want to go back to a time when I had to entertain myself, to experience the way boredom breeds creativity, to learn the contours of my own mind and allow it to work at its own pace. . . . I want the ability to stand still in a silent room . . . as silent as I can get with a three-year-old, anyway. As for my boy, I want him to see me, and know he is seen. What’s best for me is what’s best for him, too.” —C
If you’re stumped, here are some questions to help you get started:
- What do you love about your phone?
- What don’t you love about your phone?
- How do you feel after you spend time together?
- What does your phone want you to pay attention to, and how does this align (or not align) with how you want to be living your life?
- What would a satisfying and enjoyable daily life look like?
Imagine that it’s the future and you’re in a healthy relationship with your phone. What does the relationship look like? What are you proud of? How do you feel?
Q: In your own life, have you found ways to tap into the power of your five senses?
Yes! That’s one of the goals of my “How to Feel Alive” newsletter on Substack—I realized that I’d drifted too far away from my own senses, and I wanted to create a space where I could write about my attempts to get back in touch with them! Three things I find useful: I deliberately choose clothes based on textures, and make sure that when I’m at home relaxing, I’m wearing the coziest textures possible. I also often burn a candle when I’m working (my husband got me some nice ones for Christmas). And I spend a lot of time cuddling with our dog. Her ears are so soft.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful? (I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?
When I was writing How to Break Up With Your Phone, one of my biggest personal takeaways was that our lives are what we pay attention to. What I mean is that we only experience what we pay attention to, and we only remember what we pay attention to—so when we make a decision in the moment about where to direct our attention, we’re really making a much broader decision about how we want to live our lives. I’ve found the quote, “Our lives are what we pay attention to” to be so personally helpful that I had a bracelet made for myself that says, “Pay Attention.”
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
Exercise. And playing music with friends.
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