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, however, purple has been sharing the spotlight more often than not. I think they are both colors of balance and spirituality (however you define it), and I think that both are colors of “other,” of people who follow paths of their own making.

My high school friend started me thinking about green. She has luxurious, curly, red hair and always wore little green t-shirts. Maybe this doesn’t seem like too much of a fashion statement until you start looking around and seeing the colors people wear. 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 cars that I see. I started using kelly-green t-shirts as my badge of being different. I read once in an interior design book that green was the most harmonizing color. The balance between cool and warm, the color of the natural world. That book also claimed that it was possible to have more shades of green than of any other color. Well, now, that IS interesting! My admiration grew.

My grandmother always liked purple. It never occurred to me to notice that she wore purple sweatpants and a purple sweatshirt all the time. That’s just what grandmas wear, isn’t it? On reflection, I think this was more unusual and quirky than I suspected. Also, two good friends of mine are really in love with purple and I think they’ve gotten me thinking more about it. Both of them are people who contemplate the spiritual daily and I think they feel that purple carries a mystical significance/energy. It’s also the color of that top-most chakra, the one that’s 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 purple embodies spiritual balance. Green for the physical world, the natural world, a balance of life, of the life force. Purple for enlightenment, for balance of the immaterial, of emotional well-being. I love how these two colors look together. Maybe that’s because they then harmonize and become a balance of all aspects? Or maybe that harmonization is what makes them appear so pleasing to my eye? Or maybe it’s just a fun game I’m going to play with my intellect until I leave this world? All of the questions we ask ourselves about existence rise and fall in the contemplation of two colors.