That which it is not

All pure light in the universe, born in the belly of the stars, is white. All newborn light is made up of every color or, put another way, it is made of no color. For when you are all of something, you are also none of it. Everything in this universe is defined by everything else and not by itself. Everything in this universe is defined by not what it is but rather by what it is not.

# What is color?

All the color in this vivid multi-hued life is a reflection of the pure light which is distorted from its true state. All the color is also an illusion, much like the rest of reality itself. In reality, there is no shade to life itself.

Color is one but many of the strange phenomena of life and this peculiar phenomenon highlights (pun intended) something inherently fundamental to reality itself. Color shows how everything is that which it is not.

# Color is everything but itself

The perception and awareness of color might seem straightforward to you at first glance. Look a little closer, however, and you will find that, just like the rest of nature, the workings of color are counterintuitive.

The color of an object is the color of the light it reflects. All pure light, as mentioned before, is white but within it sit a trillion colors all cozy and tight. The green leaf of a plant is green because it absorbs every wavelength of light and reflects only the green ones. That inviting swimming pool is a brilliant shade of azure because it reflects myriad wavelengths of blue.

In that sense, the color of an object is not what it takes in but all that it throws back. The color of an object is everything that it is not. And this way of understanding the color of an object is not restricted to color but to the comprehension of reality and life itself.

# Day and night

Take a step back from these shades of light and consider light itself. You might think you understand and discern light because of its presence but it is its absence that makes you not only aware but also appreciative of light’s nature.

It is only when the lights go out and darkness takes center stage, do you understand light. It is only at the interplay of shadows and light, that you gain the knowledge of the day and the understanding of the night.

# What you are

Consider your life itself. You know of life, not because you are alive, but because you are conscious of death. If every single one of us was immortal then there would not be the idea of death, let alone a word for it. And in the absence of death, there would not be the idea of life. You would continue living but never with any notion of life nor any idea of what it means to be alive.

Consider yourself. You might argue that you define and understand yourself by everything that you are and all that you do and not the other way around. When introducing yourself to a new person, for instance, you do not list all that you are not and all that you do not do. So you might argue that this argument does not hold.

While you do define yourself that way, realize that it holds ground only to everything else. The other person and you understand it only in terms of everything else. You go through life knowing what you love by figuring out what it is that you hate.

Life is understood through negation and not validation. Nothing has meaning on its own; everything finds its meaning in and through everything else.