I'll Leave the Light On

Finding the Good in Troubled Times

It’s been a minute since I posted here on this Substack page which is dedicated to positive thoughts and ideas. Did you miss me? I made the intentional decision to take a break from some of the usual writing I do to concentrate on writing the book I’ve been working on for awhile now. It’s been a very interesting process to be immersed in someone else’s story enough that I feel like at times I live in my characters’ heads. I’m learning it’s necessary to not think like myself, but think like the people in the story I want to tell. But all that is for another post.

As I attempt re-entry back into sharing here on a regular schedule, I have opened a few blank pages and found myself trying to write about attempting to figure out how to process what is happening in the world. And at the same time I’m still looking for the glimmers of goodness that are everywhere but are being smoke bombed by the louder, darker seemingly endless barrage of discontent, anger, and bad news that we are inundated with day after day. When I open news sites and social media these days, it’s so heavy and even painful to take in. I can only do so much of that before my soul begins to shrivel.

Photo credit: vecteezy stock photo

If I am to be transparent as I always promise to try to be, I am finding it very frustrating and disturbing to attempt to have meaningful discussions around things happening in our world. So many rigid, thick lines have been drawn around this side or that side that now those of us who spend more time thinking than talking are being accused of not joining the cacophony of noise and not choosing one think tank or the other. Although we don’t magnetize ourselves into pre-determined compartments and tend to embrace values from many viewpoints, we are called all sorts of demeaning names if we don’t sound just like the herd some have joined and chosen to echo. I grew up on a cattle ranch, so forgive me for the metaphor, but the din of what I’m hearing is like cows who start mooing when one in the group does. Often they don’t know exactly why or what they are mooing about, but everybody else is mooing, so every cow chimes in.

If you know me at all, you know I have deep feelings and thoughts about what I see and hear going on in the world. I am paying attention but I don’t get loud about it. To some that may seem wrong and insist we have an obligation to speak. However, I am one who spends a lot of time listening and researching and looking at events and ideas from both sides as a bystander in the middle. I refuse to climb wholly through the barbed wire that keeps so many corralled in one set of ideas and dialogue. Real conversations and debates are slammed shut with intensity. We are not hearing each other. We are merely waiting for our chance to share our “truths” and diminish the truths of others who in some ways think differently.

All that said, I feel compelled to keep looking for the good that I know is all around us, but is softer and quieter. When was the last time you tuned out from the noise and listened for kindness, compassion and peace? I promise you it’s there, but you have to stop shouting to be able to hear it. And please stop accusing those who choose to live in those softer, quieter spaces of not caring. We just go about our caring in unnoticed acts of generosity of spirit and a quiet outpouring of love.

If you feel as I do that there is much to be grateful for in this life we are given, come back and join me here to point to those things. And if you don’t even have the strength left to point or speak, come soak up the positivity I intend to keep sprinkling about.

To quote Motel 6, “I’ll leave the light on for you.” Come find it here and choose to leave your light on, too. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Only light can drive out darkness.” Together we can shine so brightly there will be no room for even a shadow.