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Colors of the Sun, Goddard Space Flight Center, Humankind, Light Wavelengths, Musings, NASA, People, Sun
The thing about profound moments is that they always pop up unexpectedly, interrupting our perfectly happy moments of dull and a listless intellect with small messages of significance. This week, this was mine:
This motley patchwork photo was posted on the NASA – Goddard website and Instagram. That is our sun; the bright, fiery orb that lights up our sky and warms our planet. While we usually see our sun as yellow, according to the Nasa-Goddard website, it “emits light in all colors, but since yellow is the brightest wavelength from the sun, that is the color we see with our naked eye.” Using specialized telescopes that can take pictures capturing color and wavelengths beyond our human eye, this conglomerate photo of all the sun’s colors was pieced together.
And there it was, another lesson from nature; a reminder of the beauty and complexity that surrounds us. People are the same way, too.
We, people, can so easily appear to be “one color.” And I don’t mean necessarily in the skin-color sense, but that, too, does apply. We can fall into the trap of simply seeing people in the boxes we believe them to be in, or the boxes they want us to believe they are in. People aren’t that flat and one-dimensional. They are complex and shining all sorts of different colors out into the universe. They are good and bad, filled with happiness and sadness, balancing anger and contentment. While some may radiate some colors more brightly than others, they possess the whole spectrum of light.
Not only does this serve as a personal reminder to accept people wholly, but it also serves to accept myself wholly. One cannot achieve success without a little failure, happiness without a little sadness, or strength without moments of weakness. The reverse is true, also. If we are happy, it is because we also know sadness. We can be good because we know what our evil nature is capable of. I am all for pursuing one’s bliss and happiness, but I think it is also important to accept the complexity of life, the complexity of people. To understand that while certain aspects of an individual may be invisible to us, people are complicated and elaborate. Literally, there is, and always will be, more than what meets the eye.
So, that was my moment. Don’t judge the sun by its color. Embrace your illumination!
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