One Immense Rainbow

A Story by Kristen

This is a short, one-page piece that I had to write for my English class. It's a response to the adage: you have to go through the rain to reach the rainbow.

It’s true. You do have to go through the rain to reach the rainbow. To me, this adage means that you have to go through the pain to experience the joy, or you have to go through problems in order to get to the solution. It’s just a fact of life: there are going to be problems and pain, but once you overcome those there’s always a reward. Whether it’s something minor like babysitting your younger sibling, or something much larger such as surviving four years of high school, there will constantly be some sort of compensation for your efforts. As much as it hurts to admit, we cannot know joy without first experiencing pain. Getting through the pain makes the joy seem incredible.

Life throws challenges at us every day. These challenges defy us emotionally, mentally, and physically. After you get through it, though, doesn’t the reward of completing the challenge seem amazing? If you really think about it, every sort of reward comes after some kind of trial or problem. It made me realize that every problem has something good come out of it, or, to relate to another adage, “every cloud has a silver lining”. One must go through the bad times to appreciate the good, or else how would you recognize good things? The answer is, you couldn’t. There would be no possible way to know if something was good if you never experienced anything bad.

To put another spin on this adage, going through rain wouldn’t be worth it if there was no rainbow to go with it. Sometimes there is nothing good that comes out of a bad experience. This is, obviously, a more pessimistic view of joy and sorrow, but it is true as well. You, however, have to look at the big picture and try to think positively: somehow this will change you for the better, make you stronger, or will eventually turn out successfully. Everything you do in life adds up to one larger sum, one bigger picture, or one larger joy: one immense rainbow.