The
rainbow and its reflection in the water was a beautiful sight.
I was
moved to reflect.
I recalled
from my school days learning about the physics of how a rainbow is formed.
Light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed into its constituent colours by
the drops of rain. Most people know the colours of the rainbow from the
initials: ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are
the classic seven colours of the rainbow. Most of us know that the section of
the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light is made up of many more
colours than these seven. It is though, these seven that we classically
associate with a rainbow.
I
reflected further.
The rainbow
is a pleasing metaphor for life and its myriad forms. Individual lives do not
exist in isolation. No matter what animal or plant you can think of in nature,
it does not exist without interacting with other animals and plants around it.
Together, all the various plants and animals combine in almost unimaginable
complexity to co-create whole eco-systems.
Each
eco-system supports and sustains all the plants and animals within it. Each
plant and animal supports and sustains the eco-system.
We humans
are part of these complex eco-systems. We are not isolated beings. Without the
eco-systems we are part of we could not exist. We are like one of the colours
of the rainbow.
Try to
imagine a rainbow without one of its colours. Suppose the colour blue was
missing. It would no longer be a rainbow, would it?
Sadly,
much of humanity is acting (metaphorically) as if one or more of the colours of
the rainbow do not matter. Species (and even genera) of plants and animals are
being made extinct as an insane rate.
My
reflection continued on.
If light
is passed through a prism the entire visible spectrum of colours appears on the
other side of the prism. The unity of light (what we call white light) is
refracted and dispersed by the prism, and we see the diversity of colour
contained in that unity. Unity creates diversity.
Now place
another prism after the first prism. But invert it. Now pass the white light
through the first prism and then the colour spectrum through the second. What
happens?
The colour
spectrum is returned to white light. Diversity creates unity.
It is a
metaphor worth reflecting upon often, because it can be very easy to forget
that everything in the world is co-created by everything else. Nothing arises
or exists completely on its own. Nothing is independent of other things,
although it may be unique (i.e. it may be the unique colour red in our metaphor).
Next time
you see a rainbow think and reflect upon the diversity of life and how that
creates the wondrous unity that life is.
