Years ago, in an art class, the professor pointed to a tree and asked the class what color it was. Naturally, the answers were green and brown; he then asked us to look again.
In truth, a tree is not green. It is not brown. A leaf can reflect silver, white, grey, and infinite variations. When we squint our eyes and look at the same tree, we’ll see the darkness contrasting more clearly with light.
There are colors the human eye cannot perceive at all. So-called ‘impossible colors’, spectrums of light invisible. We lack the biological receptors to see UV light. We can feel heat from infrared light, but it has a color, unseen by human eyes. X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves, all imperceivable, but exist nonetheless.
The spectrum color wavelengths of light are revealed when light passes through water droplets and are reflected back, resulting in a rainbow. Always there, but unseen by the human eye.
So if eyesight is so nebulous, so faulty, what we’re sure we see with our own eyes is illusionary; this is likely true for our other senses. Flawed believing, faulty assumptions, guilt over the suicide of a loved one, for if we had seen it, if there were a way for us to know, we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it; often they did not want us to know.
When I was told that my brother had ended his life, I fell to the floor, crying, ‘it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault’. This is a common reaction for suicide survivors. In truth, despite my missteps in the past, times when I wish I’d been kinder, when I had no idea what was going on, it was not my fault, and that’s actually painful to say.
There is so much that my brother hid, so much I didn’t know, didn’t see, that he buried or disguised. He kept his door shut, in every respect, until he just couldn’t do it any longer.
What we don’t see may be because we have, must have, limitations, or what we thought we should have seen, may not have been there at all. It may be that the extent of our loved ones’ illness was not revealed until their passing. We are not able to see into the mind of loved ones any more than we can see the wavelength spectrums of light, particularly if they did not want us to.
Impossible colors are just that, unseen and unknowable.
