There is no Colour

Nothing is ever as it seems. Not even the roses are red, nor the skies are blue.

All my life, I had thought the grasses and forest were green — and violets are blue, until a year ago. It was around this time I had taken a trip with a few of my closest friends to Iseyin, a town in Oyo state to spend some time in nature and climb the Ado-Awaye mountain.

We were standing on a huge rock, looking over the town and I commented on how blue the skies and green the plants are, compared to the city. My friend, Yemisi responded by telling me ‘you know there are no colors right, and they are illusions?’ I thought it was one of her jokes but I saw her face was dead-serious.

If I have ever been in denial in this life, I would say that was my biggest moment of denial. How could I accept I have been living a lie all my life, and all my education on colors were just about perception? How could I reconcile the punishments or rewards I had gotten in school as a child, for not getting the names of colors right or getting it right?

This may seem not much of a big deal — at least, it’s what I try to tell myself — but it was and is still a big deal to me.

To be very sure about what I had just found out, I went on google to do some research, and I must say, I am still trying to grasp the reality of this. Especially when I am in beautiful places with vibrant colors contrasting in the most precious way, I tell myself this is all a lie.

According to an article published in Forbes “What we experience as “color” is just the brain’s way of making sense of the electromagnetic photons that collide with the photoreceptor array that is the retina in the human eye.”

What this means is that, in the real sense, colors do not actually exist. It all stems from the brain, and how light plays on the object. What is real is Light.

However, light is not colour but reflected light as the brain interprets it. If this somehow is your first time learning colors aren’t real, you should probably read more on it as my explanation here is not sufficient, and I am also still learning more about how it works.

I would say, regardless of how I still feel about this revelation, I believe that Colors are a useful tool in our world, just that it’s not an accurate representation of our world.