I’m looking out the window in our car, my elbow sticking out in the fresh breeze. It smells like spring, but probably because it just rained this afternoon. There aren’t any rainbows, though there were probably some during school. School hides that kind of thing all the time, only letting you see it through bars, like dangling a jail cell’s keys in front of the inmate.
The radio is going. It’s not on music or anything, just talk radio. It’s not sports, either. It’s just a bunch of cocky old peacock-hosts trying to get people to shout. They’re trying to prove how much better their point of view is, how much more correct they are than everyone else. I can’t stand that kind of thing, but my dad loves it.
He turns it up a little louder. His hearing isn’t as good as it used to be, ever since he crashed his cherry-red Mustang in the eighties. I had the window down so I could focus on the outside sounds, but all that did was make it harder for him to hear. I put the window up, letting the argument on the radio fill up the car, like a preacher at the Easter service. He turned it down again.
It wasn’t that it was too loud this time, though. He was about to start another tradition. My sisters and I turned our heads from the windows. We knew what was coming. Our brains were warming up, like a runner before the race.
“Hey, girls,” He began. He looked kind of like a fifties boy all dressed up in Western regalia, staring eagerly at the blank screen for the newest adventure of the Silver Bullet. “I’ve got a question. You’ve probably heard it before, but here it is: if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one’s around to hear it, does it still make a sound?”
My sisters all say “yes,” and my dad doesn’t offer opposition. He already knows my answer; he knows he doesn’t have to confuse them. He looks at me expectantly, eager for the latest installment of the “Dawley Debate.” So, to an unusually quiet audience, I answer “no.”
Not many people answer like that instantly, even people who take the question seriously. There is the basic assumption that, whether or not someone is there to see the tree, it still exists. People believe that if it has existed, it still exists. We assume that existing doesn’t require observation, even though we can’t scientifically prove something exists until it’s observed. The world disappears when on one’s looking.
My sisters say that if you put a tape recorder there, it would pick up the sound. That’s obviously true, but the tape recorder is now observing the tree, and that doesn’t prove anything except a tree makes a sound when it falls. So, what does it imply if the world exists without us?

If the world still exists even when we’re not looking, then we’re just little specks, crawling around through our lives like ants swarming around an anthill. We don’t go very far, we live short lives, and then we die. We spend very little time thinking about things beyond the anthill, or what happens when our bodies die. If there’s a soul, it’s nothing we see around our anthill, but we still assume it goes somewhere when it dies, since the universe is so ginormous, but thinking about things beyond our five senses gives us headaches. We’re stick figure people firmly pasted to a refrigerator door; instead of noticing the kitchen, we stare at our pretty, green, construction-paper universe and pretend that’s all there is.
If the world goes away when we’re not looking, then it’s more like a flashlight in the heart of a cave. Not the entire cave lights up when we turn on our flashlights, and as soon as we move the beam, that first area recedes into darkness. We can shine our flashlights wherever we like, but we can only light up so much of the cave. All we have of the world is in that circle. The rest of it disappears, lost until we light it up again. What’s in it changes, and we can even make the circle bigger by pointing it farther away, but the light gets weaker the bigger the circle and we lose clarity. We are perfectly aware that we only have that small bit of light and that we’re surrounded by emptiness, but it isn’t a surprise. It’s normal, like turning on the porch lights at night, or stubbing toes on the way to finding the light switch.
There’s no proof for life after death, but when we assume that the world is gone without our flashlights, maybe all that happens is the flashlight batteries die. The world is a lot smaller if we answer “no,” but then the place outside it becomes forever. Maybe dying is just like a flashlight going out, and then we get over it, stubbing our toes until we find the light switch.
My sisters give me confused looks. They’re annoyed with me, but I can’t help it. It’s just two different ideas, two different philosophies, rushing at each other like two rams. No matter how much fighting and debating we do, we’ll never reach a happy conclusion. My way of thinking doesn’t make sense to them, and their way doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like trying to mix oil and water.
My dad has a grin on his face. He couldn’t change my mind either, but he feels like he’s “won.” He’s one of those people who think there’s only ever one right way of thinking. He’d say that oil is just stupid water, or vice versa. He says things like: “You can think whatever you want [as long as it’s not stupid].” He thinks he’s telling the truth, but since he thinks his opinions are always right, anything else is “stupid.” That’s why he likes talk radio, since all those old peacocks think the same way.
He turns the radio on again, this time to classic rock, and I look out the window, savoring the newly green hills before my flashlight shines elsewhere. My sisters are looking too, but the trees don’t disappear for them. They let their memories trick them into thinking the world is still there when they look away.
I crack the window open a little. The air smells wet and dewy, and all the colors look much brighter from the rain. I try to remember the exact hues for later, when the trees die and become skeletons, but my littlest sister interrupts and points out a rainbow just above the hospital, close to where we used to live.
It’s just starting to rain again, but it’s the light, misty kind that’s good for rainbows, even if it makes my hair hideously frizzy. The colors aren’t that bright on the rainbow, and there’s no pot of gold at the end of it, unless it’s somehow hovering thousands of feet above the earth. Our town doesn’t get many complete rainbows, but we admire them anyway, no matter how broken or small. This one is definitely one of the punier ones.
I watch the rainbow until the hospital blocks it from my view, all gray and solemn. It’s gone by the time we could’ve seen it again, and my littlest sister is disappointed. My dad says something comforting, and she gets distracted. She talks about her day at school and this eventually leads to an argument, which I drown out as effectively as talk radio.
By the time we get home, I’ve come up with three short little blips about everything I saw on the way. They never get written down, no matter how good they sound in my head. Things like that multiply about a thousand times faster than even the most active rabbits, so by the time I’m anywhere to write them down, they’ve either been replaced by other thoughts or they don’t sound as good anymore.
As I’m going inside, I notice another rainbow. It’s bigger than the other one and the colors are more vivid, but I have other things to do. I keep going and let my flashlight pass over it, sending it back into the abyss. My littlest sister still likes that kind of thing, so she stays and keeps her flashlight on it a little longer, even if she doesn’t think she’s using one.
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The above was an essay for my AP class on a philosophy-related prompt. The essay is definitely an independent piece, but I thought it worked well with the picture.

The picture was taken a while ago (along with the other rainbow picture), but I just recently dug it out of my computer memory and tweaked the colors a tad. Hope you like it!