“The soul would have no rainbow
if the eyes had no tears”
John Vance Cheney
“Tears” (August 1892)
Surely all of you know how a rainbow is born. When it rains, the sunbeams hit the raindrops that divide the light into its seven colours. They create a very big, colourful arc in the sky that we call RAINBOW and that we consider as a symbol of harmony and joy. But…Can you imagine another possible way in which a rainbow is born?
A few days ago my friend Sara and I were waiting for the bus after school when suddenly it started to rain. We observed all that drops on our hands, we noticed a faint, distant rainbow and we started to think and fancy together…
Tears. This is what happens in the world. The sky cries. People cry. Their eyes see all the bad things of the world and cry. Their tears are coloured by what their eyes see. Red is the blood spilled in wars. Yellow is people’s envy. Orange is the desert: dryness, emptiness, poverty. Green is nature, wild and destructive: hurricanes, earthquakes, disasters. Blue is sadness and tears. Indigo is the night: darkness, loss, confusion. Violet is pain and mourning. These tears fall on the ground and are so opacified by evil… They are tears of despair. But then a sudden thunderstorm is unleashed by the wild nature and the rain washes away the pain, the sadness and all the bad things from the tears and unites these little, shiny pearls of serenity and joy. After the storm, the raindrops are hit by the sun and together they create an immense and wonderful rainbow, that represents harmony because of its various colours that, united, form the white of the light, symbol of peace.
Together they discover that each of their colours can have a good meaning. The green, which is at the centre, creates a balance among the others and shows them how they can express a lot of wonderful things: green is nature, that is so beautiful and useful for men with its grass, plants, trees. Red means love and good feelings and indigo is fantasy, dream, purity, genuineness. Orange and violet are the fruits of nature and the autumn leaves. Yellow represents the sun, the moon, the stars, while blue is the quietness and the immensity of the oceans and of the sky.
Together these tears of happiness, with their colours, are a symbol of a beautiful world that is often forgotten, neglected, destroyed by men.