Some days it’s as if the stars align, everything clicks into place, and the world wraps you in a warm candescent glow of opportunity and light. Other days life gets hard, things go dim, and you just have to create your own sunshine in order to stay afloat. However, no matter what the day holds, one premise never fails: If you can’t find the sunshine, then be the sunshine.
Things looks particularly sunny right now. Summer has unofficially begun, the coronavirus is finally becoming more controlled, and life as we once knew it is slowly beginning to return to some sense of familiarity if not quite yet normalcy. Effectively, it seems like things are turning a corner, and our months and months of patient, painful waiting are finally starting to pay off. As a result, these days the world seems a little brighter, lighter, and more full of hope and possibility. We feel a sense of promise and connection that we haven’t readily felt in over a year, and our spirits are buoyant with the anticipation of the good that inevitably awaits us. In short, it’s a great time to be alive.
But we also know all too well that things don’t always feel this way. The last year plus has been hard. It has been stressful. It has been filled with indescribable fear, sadness, and uncertainty. And it has been utterly exhausting. Many days it seemed as if the sun metaphorically never bothered to shine at all, as if we had been cast in a shadow of our former reality and had been irrevocably trapped there forever. In these moments we desperately sought some outlet, some reprieve or welcomed source of levity, and unless we learned to look deep within ourselves to channel something untapped and new, we were often met with a bleak blanket of nothingness.
And yet, there’s never not hope: There’s always something sunny behind the darkened clouds and shadowed layers of ambiguity. We just have to find it. And here’s the often-untold secret: We are the light. We need look no further than ourselves.
Even on the most stressful, seemingly hopeless days amidst the height of the pandemic I found solace in both the beauty of my environment and the world I was able to foster and create for myself. If things got stressful? I’d listen to some music and let it calm my nerves. If my world began to feel insular? I’d call a dear friend and indulge in some much-needed conversation. If I was itching for new scenery and a change of perspective? I’d lace up my running shoes and get outside to let the fresh air clear my heart and mind. Over time I found that while it may never be particularly easy, there is always a light.
I see beauty, hope, and sunshine in most everything around me. I see it in the slow, careful change of seasons. I see it in the smile of a stranger passing me on the sidewalk. I see it in a vibrant pop of color or an unexpected piece of artwork shining radiantly. I see it in the optimism of a community living in connection, care, and hopeful solidarity with everything around it. I see it in the joyful, emergent morning and the deep, vivid setting of the evening sun. I see it in the tumultuous storm that raises hell and wreaks havoc before creating everything anew. And I see it in the ability to vacation and create space to recenter, recharge, and better recognize – and fully appreciate – life for the beautiful, finite gift it is.
Perhaps National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman says it best: “For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
You don’t need to move mountains to see the sun: There is always, always light. If you can’t find the sunshine, then be the sunshine.
You are exactly what the world needs.
So turn it on. Summon the courage. Forget your fear and embrace what you are meant to be.
Be the light.
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