Chasing Rainbows

It seems like we spend our whole lives chasing rainbows, beautiful illusions that seduce us with their shimmering promise, only to disappear when we run toward them. I’d say it was just me, but I see it all throughout the world around me. We’re all looking for something that’s just over the next hill, just around the next bend, just out of reach.

If we could just find the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend…

If we could just get the perfect job…

If we could just afford that bigger house, longer vacation, fancier car…

If we could simply be free to do whatever it is we desperately want to do…

If we could have a baby, finish writing that masterpiece, lose that weight…

It’s always something. And it happens to all of us.

When I watch myself chasing rainbows, I can’t help but agree with the medieval philosophers who identified this phenomenon as man’s search to find his rest, peace and fulfillment in God. It’s not that having dreams and goals is bad. In fact, it’s healthy. The problem is something else: the desperate search for satisfaction that we’re sure we’ll find if we could just get “there,” wherever “there” is.

I’ve been chasing a rainbow lately. It’s a lovely rainbow, one of the loveliest I’ve ever chased. But I’m beginning to wonder if it, too, will turn out to be nothing more than a disappointing illusion that will leave me hungry for something of substance. In fact, I feel fairly certain that the illusion is already worn too thin for me to chase it much longer, and I'm sinking down to that sad, angry place where hope is a rare commodity.

I’m tired of being dissatisfied. I’m tired of striving. I’m tired of chasing rainbows.

The kicker is this: I know the answer is God. I know it. It’s not just wishful thinking or faith. I know it. The problem is how to find God.

As I’ve shared before, much of my experience in the Fundy church was a form of chasing rainbows – always pursuing a pretty ideal, always hiding from my reality, always striving for peace (what a contradiction in terms!), always reaching for love.

What do you do when you know the destination but you don’t know how to get there? What do you do when you can’t read the map through unbiased eyes? How do you stop chasing rainbows long enough to lie down in the grass and realize that rainbows are meant to be seen, not captured?

Perhaps that’s what I’ve been missing lately, and perhaps that is why soul is starting to feel so weary. Perhaps I’ve been running and reaching too hard, and I just need to lie back in the grass and watch the clouds float by, enjoying the beauty of the rainbow, accepting that it’s an illusion, realizing that perhaps it isn’t meant to be owned; it is merely intended to enhance the view.