I’ve been thinking more and more lately about the colors green and purple. Green has been my color of choice for years now. Lately, though, purple has been sharing the spotlight more often than not. I think they’re both colors of balance and spirituality (however you define it), and I think they’re both colors of “other,” of people following paths of their own making.
My high school friend made me think of green. He has luxurious, curly red hair, and he always wore green shirts. This may not seem like a fashion statement until you start looking around and seeing the colors people are wearing. I usually see a predominance of grey, dark blue, red, black and white, khaki and maybe some dark greens. Not coincidentally, these are also the colors of most of the cars I see. I started wearing kelly green t-shirts as my badge of being different. I once read in an interior design book that green was the most harmonizing color. The balance between cold and heat, the color of the natural world. That book also stated that it was possible to have more shades of green than any other color. Well now, that’s interesting! My admiration grew.
My grandmother always liked purple. It never occurred to me to notice that she was wearing purple sweatpants and a purple sweatshirt all the time. That’s what grandmas use, right? On second thought, I think this was more unusual and peculiar than I suspected. Also, two good friends of mine are really in love with purple and I think they have made me think more about it. They are both people who contemplate the spiritual on a daily basis and I think they feel that purple has a mystical meaning/energy. It is also the color of that upper chakra, the one for your spirit, above your head, not in your body like the others. Purple, like green, is also a place where cool and warm colors find balance.
My experiences with these colors lead me to feel that green embodies worldly balance and violet embodies spiritual balance. Green for the physical world, the natural world, a balance of life, of life force. Purple for lighting, for the balance of the immaterial, of emotional well-being. I love how these two colors look together. Perhaps it is because then they harmonize and become a balance of all aspects? Or maybe that harmonization is what makes them look so pleasing to my eye? Or maybe it’s just a fun game that I’m going to play with my intellect until I leave this world? All the questions we ask ourselves about existence rise and fall in the contemplation of two colors.