Back in June, I was riding home from work on my bicycle. I had just been soaked by a rain shower. As I climbed the walkway onto the Bong Bridge through sun-sparkled drops, the full, bright arch of a rainbow materialized over the water of the St. Louis Harbor. It stretched clear from one side of the bridge to the other, with the apex appearing to be a hundred feet or so above the top of the bridge surface.
Have you ever biked under a rainbow before? It leads you on, a bright promise of symmetrical perfection, hinting at treasures on either side and a gateway in the middle–to what? You never find out, because you can never actually pass through it. You can only follow it, reaching toward a kaleidoscopic mirage, until your angle in relation to the sun finally dissipates it.
Dorothy wanted to go over the rainbow to escape a hard life in the dust bowl. She imagined that on the other side was a fairyland, a would-be utopia filled with creatures who needed only her good heart and inspiration to succeed. But as Dorothy discovered, such utopias only truly exist in dreams, the fantasies we create to take ourselves away from reality when disaster strikes.
The true road to redemption leads not over the rainbow, but under it. Real liberty for humanity cannot be achieved by living in fantasy and escapism, but must be fought for in the real world. We must climb many hills, cross many bridges, always reaching for that utopic goal which is unreachable, but which ultimately guides us home. Along the way there are good and wickedness, but they are not so easy to distinguish as the characters in white lace and black robes who Dorothy meets.
The sky is bathed in technicolor dreams. The earth, where we should keep ourselves, appears less fanciful, but ultimately contains infinitely more voluminous blends of color and beauty.
