Rainbows and Reflections...

That’s a great way to start a weekend isn’t it? Said the man said walking down the street towards me.

Last weekend, I was walking up the road and said “Good morning” to the gentleman coming towards me. He acknowledged this and said, “that’s a great way to start the weekend”, pointing to something behind me. At this point I wasn’t sure if he was being positive or negative, as the way he said those words ‘that’s a great way to start a weekend’ could be either???? All became clear when I turned around, looked behind me and saw a full rainbow. It was quite majestic and like the smile I’d noticed on his face, I too now had a big grin coming through as well.

We said goodbye and as I continued on my walk it dawned on me that I must be missing around 50% of my life with regards to what’s happening behind me. Had I not bumped into this man or if he’d not stopped and alerted me to the rainbow behind, I would have missed it. What else have I missed?

Some might say that if we don’t know something was there in the first place we can’t truly miss it; I’m not sure how much I subscribe to this view. Though possibly an Oxymoron, I can certainly give an example of something I don't have but miss not having it. What I do know is that it was pleasing to have had that experience.

I’m not going to start wearing a hat with a rear view mirror attached to it or stop and look behind me every 5th step, but it has got me thinking that from time to time maybe it’s healthy to pause and look behind and perhaps more appropriately (or easily), to do this from a psychological aspect and ‘reflect’ on things that have occurred so we can learn from them, build on them and where possible even move forward or on from them.

We can all look back on our lives and remember certain moments where if we had our time again we might react differently or deal with the situation in another way. There are times where we might have been too shocked to have been able to think straight, or we spoke the first thing that came into our head, or we tried to be clever or we couldn’t think of anything to say/wished the ground would swallow us up!

Regardless of positive or negative past experiences, reflecting on them can help us in many, many ways.

Rainbows come and go, they light up the vista and radiate colour. Plus in this situation, for me, it's really made me think. Reflections I guess, to some extent do the same…