When I see things in nature, I often think about the life lessons we can learn from their presence. Take rainbows, for example. These luminous bands in the sky are not only colorful and beautiful — they also have meaningful wisdom to impart.
Here are three lessons I’ve learned from them:
Lesson 1: Our View Is Not Always Complete.
We typically think of rainbows as arcs, but that’s not how they appear in nature. They’re actually circles, with a large portion of the circle hidden from our view by the earth. (The full circle can be seen if you’re flying above the rainbow in an airplane.)
The lesson is this: Whatever we see, or think we see, is not necessarily the whole picture. That’s important to remember when we have a disagreement with someone. As rainbows remind us, our point of view is limited and we don’t always have all the information we need.
Lesson 2: Things Aren’t As Solid As They Seem.
Rainbows don’t really exist – or perhaps more accurately, they don’t exist in the way we might think they do, as “real” objects in space. They’re purely an optical phenomenon. They're like a mirage that shimmers in the distance with no actual physical substance, existing only in our eyes and minds.
Modern quantum physics (and age-old spiritual traditions like Buddhism) tell us that the whole universe is like this. The more deeply we look into things, the more we discover there’s no “there” to hold onto. Molecules are made up of atoms, which are 99.999999% empty space — and the rest is just tiny bits of electrical charges whirring around. There’s nothing solid to grasp. It’s all a rainbow.
Lesson 3: Think About What You’re Chasing.
It’s impossible to reach the end of a rainbow. That’s because a rainbow’s appearance is dependent on our position relative to it. If we move closer to the rainbow, the whole rainbow moves with us. That means we could never reach the pot of gold at the end, no matter how hard we try.
Here’s my takeaway on that: It’s good to have goals in life, and we should try our best to achieve them. But we shouldn’t waste our time chasing things that aren’t worth pursuing ... and which aren’t as magical as we think they are. Life is too short. We need to decide what’s important and worthy of our quest, and we need to direct our energies there.
Those are three of the rainbow-inspired reflections that came to mind for me. If you have other thoughts on these luminous arcs (oops, I mean circles), I'd love to hear them.
Photographer's Footnote: This was the final photo taken during my recent cross-polarized light experiments.