While on a walk today, I thought about things. Among these, the color black.
Usually, black, to our society, symbolizes negativity. Black is death. Black is gloom and loneliness. Why, though? Why black? Is it its darkness? Most likely. Darkness, to most, is scary; instinct says to turn away from it. That's why it's opposite of white, the lightest, purest color there is.
While on my walk, I looked for something black. Scanning the neighborhood for something striking or unusual (or something to write about), I gradually became further disappointed. Nothing interesting.
I passed black trash bin lids, black shutters and doors, shiny black mailboxes that glinted in the morning sun, even several black vehicles. All ordinary pieces of the world with little significance.
I then lay my eyes upon a house. The front yard was, in short, a mess. A jungle of weeds engulfed what used to be clean, cut grass. Though there was life everywhere, the house itself was lifeless. Even just looking at it alerted me that something had happened to whoever was living there. Something bad.
As I pondered this, I saw exactly what I had been looking for while on my walk.
The windows. On the outside they were framed with white panels and faded shutters. When peered into, however, all you saw was deep, dark, black.
A wave of realization overcame me. At that moment, it came to me. Black is far more than a color in the spectrum. It is a feeling, an expression, a hollow, bitter hole of lifeless nothing. Whoever owned this house, whatever their story, it ended in black. Like the fadeout at the conclusion of a movie.
Over.
Finished.
Black.