Friday, August 22, 2008

The gold at the end of rainbow...




Few days back, while driving around Ashish and I saw a beautiful rainbow which we managed to capture on our camera. Those beautiful colors splashed across the sky brought back something old which I read somewhere...You will find gold where the rainbow ends. I remember, I read this saying when I was very young in a children's story book. It got stuck with me since then.


When I was young I used to believe that there is really gold to be found. Whenever I used to look at a rainbow, I always wanted to know where it ended. I used to think, if I find that gold, all the troubles would end. I would have enough money so that my dad won't have to work so hard, so that I could have whatever I wanted without thinking twice, I could go on big vacations with my family, own lot of dogs...and then I went to geography class. It was in those dry lectures that I realized that its impossible for me to know where the rainbow ends. Hence, the dream to own that gold was shattered. I never understood the true meaning of this saying.

After so many years when I saw that rainbow in the cloudy sky of Chicago, I realized that the gold is not the gold of this materialistic world. The gold signifies the ultimate happiness. The happiness that we keep pursuing. Then we are alone, we always dream to fall in love, when we fall in love we always dream of getting married to that person and spending our whole life with that person. Once married, we are looking forward to kids; we struggle to keep our parents happy, struggle to keep our kids happy, struggle to keep ourselves happy. The different colors of life, the different moods of life, and different kind of people we meet...they all get lost in a stupid journey to get that ideal world where no one is unhappy. Aren't we making ourselves unhappy in pursuit to keep everyone happy? We are pursuing that gold which we will never find. In that journey to find that gold we forget the beautiful path we are on.

There is no "happily ever after", there is no ideal world...there is no gold. The only thing that remains is rainbow...and so many times we forget to enjoy this beautiful mix of colors, in search of the nonexistent gold. Have we ever stopped ourselves to say...look how beautiful my life is without the mad rush for the ideal happiness. Have we ever stopped to look at the greens of the earth, the blues of the sky and violets, Indigos, Blues, Greens, Yellows, Oranges and Reds of a rainbow...