The importance of light..........

 

 

After weeks of frantic and intensive painting, I finally finished the last piece for the exhibition.

Relieved as I was, I also felt a little "now what?". As I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, I noticed layers of dust clinging to the blades of the ceiling fan. (And this without my glasses on!)

"Hm," I thought, "maybe I should do some cleaning, dusting, and some such now when the painting is done". For the duration of the painting frenzy, my cleaning method had been to take off my glasses, but I realized when I saw the dust on the ceiling fan, that the time had come for me to do some serious cleaning. A large mug of strong coffee and armed with the vacuum cleaner, I put on my glasses and decided to rid my bedroom of dust. Unbelievable. There was dust clinging to the paint on the walls! Layers of it.....white, fluffy, and lots of it. Where did it all come from? Determined to make the bedroom dust free, I put on the little brush attachment on the suction hose and started to vacuum the walls, behind things, under things, and on top of things. Balancing on an old wooden chair, I decided to include the light resistant curtains. Not a good idea....barely touching the curtain rod, the whole thing came down bringing the vertical blind arrangement with it! Crash!!! "Right," I thought, "I'll just get rid of the vertical blinds, wash the curtains and clean the windows then."

Since I had never washed the curtains before, I thought a good soak before throwing them in the washing machine would be a good idea, so in the soak they went. The reason the curtains were light resistant, is that they had some rubbery kind of coating on the back which in hindsight probably should have given me cause for pause before I soaked and washed them in the machine, but I was on a mission, so I ignored that fact. When I pulled the curtains out of the washing machine...they were slimy. "Never mind," I thought, "they will be alright once they dry".

Wrong. When I came to take them off the washing line, they were stuck to it. I basically had to rip them off, and as I did, bits of rubber stuck to the line. "Never mind," I thought, "I'll just hang them back up anyway, after all, there were only a few small bits of the rubbery backing gone".

When I awoke this morning, I was greeted by numerous little flecks of light, like tiny stars, making their presence known. "Amazing"' I thought, "how powerful light is, even the tiniest of lights is able to break through darkness".

"Light", in physics> luminous/radiant energy, an essential force behind many chemical, biological and physiological changes in life forms on earth.

"Light", and its opposite "darkness", have also been used in many cultures as symbols in a variety of forms in literature through human history, and commonly they represent two opposing forces: love>hate, good>evil, happiness>despair, etc..

There is something about light that attracts many of us humans. Perhaps it may be because

light helps us to see things, light> as from the sun, warms us, light helps things to grow, and light as how we see the stars in some of us evokes a sense of mystery, and lights as in Christmas lights, fire works, etc. brings a sense of joy to some of us. Placing a human being for a long period of time in a space void of any form of light, for many can be a terrifying experience. Most of us feel more comfortable and secure when we have visibility, and perhaps this may contribute to why we commonly  experience "light" as something "good"?

In the midst of so much "darkness" i:e; wars, famines, poverty, climate change, natural catastrophes, political unrest, disasters of many kinds, etc., it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and as if the "darkness" is too powerful to overcome. In such moments, I am reminded of St. Francis of Assisi's words: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

(Some scientists suggests that a human eye can see a single lighted match from 50 miles away.)

Even if the problems around us seem too big, too impossible to do something about, may I suggest that rather than "cursing" the darkness, we "light" a candle...and with that I mean doing something, even the smallest little thing, that may bring some "light" for somebody else.

 

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”  

(William Shakespeare)