Black - The Lightest Color!

Black-the world’s most loved color. Did I say anything wrong? I don’t think so. Anyway this is the color the world considers the most sober. You wear black to a party and you wear it to mark an event of bereavement. A truly ‘evergreen’ color: talk about paradoxes!

Black-the symbol of darkness. It’s got to do with everything mysterious and gory. But then it is the one entity which is very easily destructible. When in abundance, it’s almost almighty but even a small, solitary candle can blow it to smithereens. Omnipotent and awfully weak at the same time! So what is it with darkness that inspires so much fear and terror on many a mind? Is it its association with the color black? I think not. Darkness has a partner that incites a feeling of foreboding in its subjects: The Unknown. This knowledge or the lack of it, about the Unknown, lends darkness the power it commands, not the color ‘black’.

Black-the color a blind person is most used to. Eyes open or closed, it doesn’t matter-all he sees is this color. He is ignorant of the many different colors that brighten up this world. Never does he see the reddish hue that fills the sky when the sun rises or the colorful flowers that smile back at him each time he unknowingly looks at them. Never does he see the sunshine streaming in through the open window or the face of his loved-one. All he does see is a blanket of never-ending darkness spread out in front of him where he is left alone, to grope around; in order to feel his way out. But then, God is all-embracing and very understanding. If he closes one door, he opens another. A blind person, deprived of his sense of sight, has his four other senses so heightened that they easily compensate for his loss. A helping hand accompanied by a smiling face is all that’s needed to lessen his sorrow.

Black- a ‘Messenger of Mourning’. It is a color which has everything to do with sadness. You can feel the heavy, lingering feeling in the air when you walk into a graveyard, everyone dressed in black, taking in with huge, uneasy gulps the experience that accompanies bereavement. But the heaviness is somewhat, sometimes totally, subdued by the colorful flowers everyone has in his hands. So we have it. This color which may seem very powerful on the exterior is not invincible at last. There’s always something that can just deny its existence. This brings us to the juxtaposition of Good and Evil. No matter what, Good shall prevail!

Black- the envelope of darkness a city is engulfed in when the lights go out. The one constant is the color ‘black’. Man feared this color because it means the end of a day, the end of a lifetime, the end of your existence, the time when you give up and go home and wait for a new day to begin because, on some level, you are sure that the sun will rise again. Darkness can never prevail forever. This is where lies defeat for the color ‘black’. Man went a step further and did all he could to completely enslave it. Now we have cities that never sleep because darkness lost the war a long time ago!

Black-the color of your dinner jacket; the jacket you wore to a party last night; the jacket you wore when you got married or the jacket you wore when you lost your dearest friend to the never-forgiving clutches of Death. Again the one constant is the color ‘black’. Do you wear this color only because it is chic, fashionable? No. Of course there would be more to it than that! This is one question I still haven’t figured out a proper answer to. It seems to me unfathomable. How is this color the symbol of sadness, mourning, evil and sobriety all at the same time! Beats me!