I have a theory of my own about the dress that has recently swept the interwebs, only it isn’t based on color or eye science or even on the viral nature of the online world.

I happen to think that we’re obsessed about the dress because we’re obsessed about ourselves, about knowing ourselves better and understanding more deeply how our experience of life and the world compares to others’.

The instant we discover there’s a polarizing entity out there that allows for swift and definitive further classification of self, we’re compelled to participate. Which type are we? How do we compare? What latent thing inside us has always been there but never realized? What Color Do You See? What’s Your Ideal Date? Which Celebrity Are You Most Like? What Vacation Spot Is Your Spiritual Equivalent?

The dress is merely another in a long line of personality tests, cosmo quizzes, and coffee orders.

Then we take all these little cues, these tid bits of information collected over a lifetime–white and gold, Casual dinner for two, Jennifer Lawrence, Santorini, ENTJ–and use them to inform the broader conception of who it means to be “me.”

Sure, color disputes and quizzes are fun and harmless. What shouldn’t be taken lightly, however, is how our aptness to enroll in any of these sorts of self-illuminating situations reveals our real and sustained desire to crack the code on ourselves. Whether we take a look at a viral photo, take a legitimate personality test, or take a quiz on our ideal decorating style while getting a pedicure, we’re demonstrating our deep hunger for understanding ourselves and making more well-suited choices for ourselves in the future.

We would be wise to follow that tendency and actually do some figuring out of who we are and who we’d like to be. Not compared to anyone else. Not out of five prescribed options. Not translated from intangible to shop-able.

The more solid we are in who we actually are, in what feelings exist inside of us, in knowing what feels good to us and what feels bad, the less we lean on external supports to validate what we’re commanding be validated. And the more grounded we are in that being, the more comfortable we become with the idea that everyone possesses their own set of feelings and needs and preferences and dreams that are equally as unique as our own.

And then we can live in a world where blue-and-black seers live alongside white-and-gold perceivers, in peace and loving harmony.