I drink my coffee is relative darkness in the morning. The sun is hardly up when I’m up, and, if I’m unlucky enough, it’s pitch black outside many months. I love the light, but moving at the pace of the sun at that time seems more in line with where I’d like to me. After all, the brain is still a fog and the sparks are only starting to take.
My toddler, however has a different idea these days. He is close on my tail after I wake up and is ready to start the day within minutes of my last sip of coffee. Lately he walks around the house, fingers on both hands coming together in a little bow shape - the signal for “more” in baby sign language (that he picked up entirely on his own). “More…light,” he says, making me switch on the kitchen track lights. “More light” in the dining room. “More light” the second lamp in the living room. In a few seconds the entire open floor of our house is luminescent.
I’m not sure where this sudden need for light, the request for it, the demand for it has come from recently. Perhaps he’s testing the bounds of his communication, perhaps he’s testing his boundaries, or perhaps he just wants to see his toys better. In any case, he seems a whole lot happier with every lamp in the house lit - while I nervously wring my hands at the electricity bill.
I’ve always thought about light as the overarching concept that we all strive for (enlightenment, anyone?). From its origins in myth and religion (my favourite verse of the Quran has to do with light) to how it permeates our daily language (“after this week, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel'“ and “he is a luminary in his field”). It is entrenched deep in our poetry and literature, in our music and in our sports (the Olympic flame).
Light all on its own is a destructive force, however. Something we quickly realize when fires rage, volcanic ash lights up the night sky or we experience eternal sun. There are times when dark is necessary, meditative and even healing. The dark is cyclically part of illumination and to have one only is a disservice and a detriment.
The thing about light is that it can necessarily change our perception of the thing that we’re illuminating. Where once the contours of something might have been an object of the mind, only by some sense, bringing it to light shows us those contours, highlights the crags, the surfaces - whether we like it or not. It changes how we might interact with that object permanently. The dark is sometimes a richer sensory experience.
All this to say is that we can yield both light and dark judiciously. We can alter what we present and how it’s perceived. And perhaps that’s just what makes up the basis of power in this world. So if light holds such power (as does dark), it’s maybe our collective responsibility to enable light in others - to show a better way.
My son might not know it, but his request for light in the morning is a signal to me that a whole day of hope, learning, chance, breath or rest waits for us. He’s saying “light up, we have things to do.” And whether that means doing the alphabet puzzle or just watching the morning through the window, we can see the world starting to move. And perhaps it’s also a sign that we all need more light to change things.
A couple of things I’ve been reading/listening to:
How Dark the Beginning by Maggie Smith
The Light that Bridges the Dark Expanse between Lonelinesses by Maria Popova