What It Isn’t

When I was 14, I had a revelation. No, not about why we’re here, how the universe works, or whether dark matter exists or not. Nope. This was about color. It was the idea that the color we perceive an object to be is actually exactly the sum colors that it is not.

So, a green leaf is not green. A yellow sunflower is anything but yellow. And, a red apple is absolutely not red. I came to realize that viewing the majority of the world via reflective light meant an object was actually just reflecting the color with which we were trained to identify it as being. But, that meant a green leaf was actually everything except green, or more accurately, the color of a leaf is “not green” since the colors it actually possesses, keeps, absorbs, does not release, are all the other colors we place in the visible spectrum that are “not” green. The green is expelled, deflected, and rejected. Reflected.

What’s the point? Well, it’s an example of how most often that details and adjectives which we believe to be intrinsic to something, specifically defining of its character, may not be what we casually declare it is. But, instead is more about what it isn’t.

It’s where something ceases to be itself which defines what it is.

We’re talking edges.