Subtle Orange

What makes a single color one’s favorite color?

Is it emotional attachment? Is it simply attraction? Or perhaps something even deeper?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say it’s likely a bit of both attraction and emotional attachment.

Qualities of attraction would be necessary to get your attention, but what you find when you inspect the color that ignites the passion. This is where you will discover emotional attachment.

Orange is my personal favorite color.

Not the super bright, vivid, blinding hue, and certainly not the dark and dampened, almost brown hue.

Rather somewhere in between, something not too bright, and not too dark, like a warm sunset blending into the sky and the ocean on a late summer evening. Subtle wisps of reds and pinks giving it contrast alongside what few clouds might be seen, something more of a smear of white paint than that of a “fluffy” white cloud.

As a child, I would have probably said it was my favorite simply because so few held it close to their hearts. It seemed often compared to the brown dirt of the earth, considered too common and cast aside as nothing significant.

This was my own distorted perspective because as I began to look closer, I found a connection, something I could relate to, something I could understand.

As a man, orange holds weight in my heart. The shade of passion itself, Something that can contrast both the dark and the light.

Dare I say it is a color as powerful as the light of the sun itself?

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder; this is due to the uniqueness of our own perspectives, something often overlooked and easily cast aside. This is what brought my attention to the color orange.

How many people do you know personally that actually claim the color orange is their favorite color? Seriously, just take some time to think about it.

Probably not many, if any at all, right? Plenty will lay claim to a sparkling blue, a shimmering green, or even that beautiful rose red. I could go on to name pinks, and teals, and lavenders, etc; the names of hues alone could write a book.

Everyone gives in to the pretty blues and greens we see each day in our skies and our fields of long grass, patches of pretty purples, reds, and yellows, as scattered flowers sway in the wind. All are excellent colors to mark as one’s favorite.

Where does that leave my lovely little color orange? One for the few, the ones less seen, and often less heard.

I think the color orange finds a home in the hearts of every passionate individual who has ever lived.

For some, passion is fleeting; it comes briefly, then it’s gone within the blink of an eye. They could chase it for eternity and still not catch up to it.

Others refuse to let it go, gripping their passions like frightened parents too afraid to let their children venture into the unknown.

Much like the many hues of orange, passion wears many faces and is known by many names.

The next time you see an open flame, take a minute to observe it, not so much how it moves like a dancer as it flickers and cracks, but rather, how the colors shift and blend constantly.

Near the base of the flame, one might observe an almost nothing area where the flame seems to not touch what is burning. Don’t get lost in the nothing; look upwards and beyond. Pay attention to the colors of the flame, some deep dark almost reds, those bright whips of yellow keeping their distance, allowing only the orange to flow freely between them.

It is here that you’ll find just how “magic” the color orange can be. Between the red hot embers glisten and burn on the bottom, and the near golden arks of bright orange flame itself reaching up and up into the sky as if the fire itself was alive and breathing. Each whip and crackle a statement of its own existence.

Now, look at the beauty of orange in gemstones and minerals.

From citrene quartz to fossilized amber, with countless others in between.

The orange color found here can be absolutely stunning.

What I find most fascinating about gemstones are the properties that are often associated with them. Citrene quartz, for example, is believed by some to be helpful with the removal of “negative” energies.

I like the orange of a citrene quartz as it looks almost like it was added to the crystal, like syrup or oil poured over it, except the orange spreads within it, not particularly from the outside.

One particular stone of mine is like a tiny diorama; from the polished windows, it looks as if a glacier mountain range was tapped inside like a tiny work of art. The orange so dark on its peaked tip that it appears as more of a bronze or light brown, but when held to a light, that bronze bleeds out bright orange, like a sunrise, fading into the white, crystalline bottom that gleams like a fresh coat of snow.

The color orange,

It can be as vivid as the sun burns bright or as dark as last season’s dead leaves still wet and soggy on the ground, getting stomped into the mud by every passerby.

It serves as a warning when used in signage. It is also the tiny spark that encourages a new flame. It serves as protection to be seen as a hunter or a construction worker.

How dark can you dampen the color orange until it becomes brown? And the other direction? How bright until it then identifies as yellow?

If you ask me, orange is something precious and requires a delicate balance of love and discipline. The subtle difference between the red of rage and the calm of yellow.

For me, orange is a subtle reflection of my soul.