Light through the night

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re in that fulcrum of the year, as days shorten and nights grow long. It’s therefore a time for drawing the curtains and filling the interior with light.

And as someone who loves any excuse to light candles, I’m looking forward to filling my livingroom with their soft light tonight, which marks the beginning of the Hindu festival of Diwali. Because Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.

A little like Michaelmas, tbh, but with the addition of candles, since it gets dark earlier. I learned about Diwali when I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon. Since I was struggling with driving back the dark, I glommed onto it like limpets on a rock. Tonight I shall again mass candles (thanks, Ikea!) to drive back all manner of dark things. Not only do I like the soft light that groups of candles give off, the very act of lighting them one at a time and nursing along some of the ones at the end of their life slows me down. It calms me down.

Filling a room with candle light takes time; you can’t flip a switch and move on to the next task on your to-do list. And if you’re lighting those floating jobbers, you have to be very focused on not disturbing the water, because then it dowses the flames and you have to wipe them off and start over again.

It’s like the count-breaths-to-21 methodology of meditation: if you lose count because your monkey mind is distracted, you have to begin again from one.

Sigh. There are some days I never make it into double digits.

But there’s something about knowing how happy the moving lights will make me that enables me to persevere with candles. I light them, sit back and watch; and for at least a few minutes the world around me is peaceful and full of hope. Light prevails over darkness, love conquers fear, knowledge overcomes ignorance, and good triumphs over evil.

Last night I also sat before the flickering light of a yahrzeit candle, on the second anniversary of my BFF’s death. Remembering her helps me to consciously focus on filling my life with light. Or, as she might say, walking in the light.

Like lighting many candles in a dark room, this takes time. You don’t flip the switch and fill your life with light; you light one candle at a time, and nurse the weak ones along to give their best. And you try to be a candle in someone else’s life.