…and life, like the lantern, provides us just enough light to take our next step.
Who wouldn’t like to have a little more light when it comes to making the big decisions in life? I’d like to have a little more light even in the “which shirt should I wear” kind of decisions. Most of us would love to have a bit more foresight into how things are going to turn out before we commit. We’d like to know whether our “wise” advice is going to blow up in our face as it comes out of our mouth. We’d all be willing to pay a small additional fee for a service warranty for life matters just like we do for a new flat screen.
But alas, we don’t. When it’s dark and we’re staring at the ceiling, alone with our thoughts, we all have to admit that we’re making up most of our lives as we go along. We’re stitching together our parachute on the way down. Decisions are always our best guess with far more unknowns than knowns, little better than target shooting with a blindfold.
And yet, that’s not bad news. In fact, that’s good news. Once we truly understand that we have just enough light for the next step, that we know only enough to make our best guess, and that we aren’t guaranteed anything beyond this moment, something strange happens. Rather than despair, we can experience a strange liberation. We are freed from the need to know more than we know, freed from predicting what we can’t predict, freed from the need to be right all the time, freed from the need to be someone we are not. We are freed to be who we are and to do what we’re doing.
That’s what this website is about, learning to live with just enough light, just enough wisdom to be who we are, where we are. As we take our next step, the light available to us, like the light of a lantern, moves with us providing just enough light for the next step.
This is a website of essays I will be writing each week as well as things I have written for presentations, workshops, newsletters, publication, and for fun. There are some standalone pieces as well as some series. I have violated a basic principle of such websites by not focusing my writing on one topic aimed at a narrow audience. I’m kind of all over the place, but I hope each piece provides some light in the task of living, loving, and growing in uncertain times.