You Are the Center of Every Rainbow
I love rainbows. Even if I’m the one making a rainbow appear with a gardening hose, every time I see one, it feels like a gift. They speak to me of joy, promise, and beauty. The other week, I learned something about rainbows that makes me love them even more. You might already know this, but first off, a rainbow is an optical illusion. It doesn’t exist in a specific spot in the sky – it appears depending on where you’re viewing it and where the sun or other source of light is shining.
You, as the viewer, have the light source behind you, and the rainbow is the imaginary point exactly opposite the light source, which is called the “antisolar point.” Below is a nifty graphic illustrating this.
Rainbows form like this!
As you can see from the image, rainbows are full circles, and the antisolar point is at the center of the circle. Essentially, what this means is you are the center of every rainbow. And here’s where I think it gets even cooler. Per National Geographic, “[N]o one sees the same rainbow—each person has a different antisolar point, each person has a different horizon. Someone who appears below or near the ‘end’ of a rainbow to one viewer will see another rainbow, extending from his or her own horizon.”
The rainbow moves as you move. As this science website puts it, “Essentially, an infinite cone is formed with the viewer at the point, the rainbow as the surface of the cone, and the antisolar line as the central axis. A cone is made because the [water] drops are spherical, and the light that exits them is angled, which forms a cone when spun around…Each person has their own cone that waterdrops will reflect.”
We have our own little cone to create a rainbow. Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash
Each person has their own cone. Each person has their own rainbow. And more than that, we are each encased in our own rainbow circle. It’s special and unique to us, even if we’re standing next to someone else looking at the same thing. It’s not quite the same rainbow because fundamentally, we are each the center of every rainbow. This reminds me of a concept from my spiritual tradition.
My spiritual teacher says that the secret of meditation is to think the Divine Beloved is meditating on you, not the other way around. The secret is to imagine we are each being showered with untold bliss and love – not that we have to go chase after it or think of the thing that we love. It’s to hold the ideation that we are the center of love, that we are the beloved. To me, learning that we are the center of every rainbow is a physical manifestation of that idea. I’m looking out, seeing something beautiful and precious, but I am at the center of it. That beautiful and precious thing wouldn’t exist without me there to witness it.
I dream of a world where we remember we are each being showered with love all the time. A world where we understand we don’t have to seek outside ourselves for something beautiful, precious, or unique. A world where we recognize every rainbow is just for us. A world where we remember, we are the center of every rainbow.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
