White

As I was showering this morning, I had a strange thought. It was simply the word “white,” nothing else. Puzzled would be an understatement. I am used to having my mind work in strange ways but this was weird. Naturally, it was all I could think about for the next several hours.
The first thing that struck me was “what white”? I have friends with the name of White. I used to check the word “white” on my census type forms before I found out I was Caucasian. No, I am pretty sure this is the color white. As my mind raced through all the applications, verses, and truisms about white, naturally my eyes were riveted to everything colored white. Or was it really white that I was looking at? There are at least eight different shades of white in our bathroom. I thought “white is white” and that was the end of it, but I guess it isn’t so.
I realized that what I accept as pure white may be all in my mind’s eye. There seem to be a lot of variations that go way beyond the “pearl white” of newer cars or antique white of many new building interiors. When I came downstairs to look out the kitchen window, huge puffy white flakes were magically meandering to earth. The phrase “white as the new snow” naturally came to my mind or is it “pure as new snow”? It certainly is white and different than those eight shades I thought were white in the bathroom.
What is the difference? Is it the purity or absence of other elements? Although I am not big on dictionary definitions, this was one time I couldn’t resist. Wikipedia starts with a fascinating description (and much more that I found interesting but won’t pursue here). Their thought was as follows:
White is a color, the perception which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in near equal amount and with high brightness compared to the surroundings.
White to me is a perception evoked by light that is ever changing as objects draw closer to pure light. Blinding pure light makes everything white in my eyes. I am told that even the “purest” new snow starts out as a speck of dust in the atmosphere. http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070119_snowflake_formation.html
Isn’t it interesting that the purest white that I know starts out as an impurity. Then it is dependent on the light it reflects- the brighter the light, the whiter the white. Scarlet (bright red) can actually turn white under supernaturally intense light.
What a fascinating world!