One of my favorite parts of the day is when my son Shaan walks through the door after school, full of stories. He does not just recap the day. He relives it, scene by scene. But today felt different. Today, I learned something about him that made me pause and take it all in.
It started with a guest lecture. A community college professor and a few of their students came to his school to lead a session on color blindness. Shaan, who is color deficient, or as some might say, colorblind (tomato / tomato), was invited into the room to share his perspective. And when he got home, he could not wait to tell me all about it.
He told me what they asked, how they reacted, and what he said. But tucked into the middle of his story was something that surprised me.
He uses AI to help him pick his clothes.
I will say that again.
He takes pictures of all his clothes, stores them in his phone, and every morning he asks an AI tool to choose his outfit. He uses it when shopping too, to help make sure the colors match or fit together. He is sixteen. And this is simply part of his routine now.
Talk about an innovator. Definitely my Sunster’s son. And yes, he made me proud.
Here is a kid with what most people might see as a limitation. But he does not see it that way. He has never let it stop him. Not when choosing clothes, not when navigating school, not in how he shows up in the world. Instead, he adapts. He finds a tool. He makes it work for him.
That mindset is the story here.
Because during the lecture, one of the students said to him, “Oh, we are so sorry. How does it feel to be colorblind” And his response was simple, honest, and maybe one of the wisest things I have heard in a while.
“I do not know. I have just been like this. It does not hurt me. It just is what it is.”
That landed hard, but in the best way.
No drama. No self-pity. Just a statement of fact. This is what I have, and I am doing just fine with it. Better than fine, really.
This moment reminded me of something that is easy to forget in leadership: not everything has to be fixed, solved, or masked in order to be moved through. Sometimes the most powerful move is choosing not to let a challenge define you, and instead doing something about it with what you do have.
What struck me is that this is not just a story about AI or colorblindness or being a clever teenager. It is about how we approach the things we could let hold us back. Whether it is a learning curve, a setback, a health issue, or something we have carried for years. We all have something. But what matters most is the posture we take toward it.
Shaan is not ignoring it. He is not minimizing it. He is simply refusing to see it as a reason not to thrive.
And he is teaching me, quietly and confidently, that innovation does not always come from ambition. Sometimes it comes from the everyday decisions we make to move forward with whatever we have.
It made this mama proud.
