By: Moi
Graphics by: Ma. Alyssa Therese S. Manalang
Photo by: Chloie Ysabelle T. Magno
These colors are made for everyone, and everyone is filled with these colors. People have grown up with and through colors. Many have used colors to express emotions, experiences, and, most of all, for themselves.
By picking up a crayon, many would think to use red to signify their love for life, orange to symbolize how their hearts heal as the pigment turns lighter, yellow to express their long-awaited freedom as the cast reaches its lightest peak, green to represent their contentment with themselves, blue to show the harmonic and soothing balance of their mind and soul, indigo to express the calmness of their heart, and finally, violet to depict the now tranquil spirit inside. These colors, no matter how many shades they come with, can represent a person’s journey. However, some people either take one crayon or the entire box of colors away and far from reach.
Life is a journey, and its beauty should not be limited to shades of black and white. A person's life is fruitful, no matter what they've accomplished or whoever they choose to be. Every person deserves a colorful life to look back to and be proud of. As such, every person deserves to live a life filled with color. "Every person" includes everyone, every human, and every being. All beings express and experience similar traits with love, healing, freedom, delight, peace, and tranquility. So, everyone should be privileged to use similar colors to express the same. However, it is baffling to think that the dyes to be shared are guarded and kept away by others.
Some people would do so much as to steal, covet, or even break crayons meant for others. People share similar traits. They are blooming with colors that signify their representation. And yet are overlooked by black-tinted shades. It's unfortunate to think that those who are human aren’t treated as such—and it’s just because they chose to use a variety of colors to represent what they are and what they love.
There are 24 flags of different colors, with each tint representing a significant part of the people in the community, which is more than enough to prove that they, too, are human. Gilbert Bake, the first to curate a symbol of pride in 1977, shares that the rainbow, with all of its colors, fits everyone—and that everyone can be represented and appreciated through color.
Everyone has the right to color their own life, and if others dare to make life limiting like that of a coloring book, then let them color over the lines. Let them use colors to express their feelings and to fight for what is right. Let them have the colors others kept stripping them off of. Let them be like others who are privileged enough to call all seven core colors and 18 decillion hues their own. Everyone should have the chance to chart their own life, paint their being with all the tones, and prove to everyone that they deserve the colors to represent themselves. All life is deserving, and to let the people who have waited their whole lives color with their own is to appreciate the beauty of life and the significance of colors.
What I liked about the symbolism of the rainbow is that it fits us. It’s all the colors.
It represents all genders. It represents all the races. It’s the rainbow of humanity.
— Gilbert Bake (1977)
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