Any way you look at it. We color our world.
There are black lists, red tape, and blue ribbons. You can get the green light. Or be yellow-bellied. There are blue bloods and lily livers. White flags, little red flags, and purple hearts. There’s the green-eyed monster, or even a red herring.
Now when that nifty book came out about what color your parachute might be… I had to take a pass. I decided long ago, I do not want much to do with parachutes. And in the event that I really need one, I will let the flight attendant choose what color it might be, as we plummet toward earth. As I said, I really don’t want much to do with the likes of the parachute.
Back to you and hue. Most of us have a favorite color. Some people are adamant about it. They have their “go-to-green” or their “best-blue.” My favorite color changes. Sometimes daily. When I was younger, I would pick “red” without a thought. That was the point. Without a thought. I think I just decided it was my favorite, and the word was written in stone.
Today, I like a nice orange, or green, blue, purple. Those are my favorites right now, I’d say. But just because I think a color is grand, doesn’t mean I like to wear it, or paint it on a wall, or even drive a car of that shade.
Color works like this. That Mr. Smarty Pants…. Isaac Newton… figured out this deal. He observed that color is not inherent in objects. You see… light hits the surface of an object…. and that surface reflects some colors and absorbs all the others.
And we humans… with our human eyes…. simply perceive only the reflected colors.
So… you are looking at a banana, say. The yellow is not “IN” the banana. The surface of the banana peel is reflecting the wavelengths we see as yellow…. and at the SAME time… it is absorbing all the rest.
An object appears white when it reflects all wavelengths and black when it absorbs them all.
There is a lot more to color and color theory. In fact, there are entire books on it. Like… what colors match what personality traits.
And then of course there is us. All of us are different colors. I bet it is hard to find two people with exactly the same color of skin. Pretty close, maybe. But not exact. That is why I think it is incredible that certain people think less of others because of variations on light reflection and absorption. Incredulous, really.
We are so lucky to have a world which is filled with miraculous, beautiful, infinite colors. Millions and millions of rays of light, reflecting this way and that.
Do you want to know what I think is our best way forward? If we quit trying to figure out all the differences in those colors… and start caring more about the reflection of the light.