Today on my way home from work (another 2 hours of overtime!!) I saw a rainbow. It wasn't the best rainbow I've ever seen, being rather fuzzy and almost disappearing entirely when you got up to the top of the arch. But it got me to thinking about how I'd been told that a rainbow is really a circle, but the earth gets in the way of half of it.
I remember a plane flight I took once where I looked down on the top of the clouds, and there was a rainbow reflected there - and it was a perfect circle. Fabulous! I wish I'd had a digital camera with me - although (come to think of it) I don't think digital cameras had been invented back then.
As I looked at the rainbow today, melting from purple (or is that indigo?) to blue to green to yellow to orange to red to indigo (or is that purple?) I was struck by the fact that when people (especially children) draw rainbows, the colors are very defined. You can clearly tell where the yellow ends and the orange begins - there is an actual border between the two colors. This is not what a real rainbow looks like. It is very hard to tell when one color ends and another begins, although the brighter colors in the middle look thicker than the dark purple and indigo on the edges.
This is a lot like people, and the various attributes they have. For example, a person isn't either patient or impatient. One person might be down in the blue area of patience and able to hold his/her temper for a long time, while another person might be up in the red area and explode a lot. But there are many, many gradations in between.
This is especially true of good and evil. There are very few people who are truly 'evil' in the sense that there is no good in them at all - that they are completely at one end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, the opposite is true too. No matter how good a person is, they are never quite at the optimum end of the rainbow. I am talking, of course, about normal people in this life. Jesus Christ, obviously, is an exception - as is Lucifer.
The rainbow analogy isn't just for virtues or failings. It can also be applied to talents - and in this case being near one end or the other isn't a sign of a deficiency in your character - it's just what you are and are not good at. According to my fans (mostly my family!) I am right up there in the gifted-to-make-up-poems-and-songs category but absolutely hopeless in the putting-on-cosmetics-to-make-myself-beautiful area. Neither of these attributes is necessarily better than the other one - we just have them to greater or lesser degrees.
And that is enough philophizing for today - I need to get some sleep if I'm going to have another night tonight like I did last night.
2 comments:
I love rainbows. I've never contemplated the blur of colors (and didn't they take indigo out?). I do feel we all have different talents for different reasons, and we should be happy with what we have. I truly admire people that can draw well (wish that were one of mine) but I am happy with other things that I do well. Do you think we are attracted to people with similar talents or ones we don't have? (not counting family--in that case you are just stuck with what you get, although I am pretty happy with who I got stuck with).
I'm Maleen's friend, Deanne. I'm the one who told her about the evil poppy-seed chicken. Maleen told me to read that post, and I've been back a couple of times to take advantage of your philosophical mind. It helps me find new things to ponder, so thank you, and keep them coming!!!
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