Sometimes meaning feels so elusive. Why is it necessary to search for what it all means when we will probably never figure it out in the long wrong? I guess the answer doesn’t lie in the answer at all, but in the search itself. For it is the pathway of asking questions and staying curious enough to listen to one another, while being open enough to hear how other people think differently; That activates meaning. The pathway of creating connections, especially those connections you’d least expect to design our significance is the frontier we are all charged to forge.
Humans are like a light bulb. Much like how a light bulb is made up of positive and negative energy flow, we too are complex creatures, dealing with literal polar opposite energies flowing inside our veins. Energy that is selfless, and energy that is selfish. energy that is ego based, and energy that is soul based.
AND YET-
There is a conductor inside the light bulb that blends these negative and positive terminals together beautifully. It is called the “Tungsten Filament.” And it is this thin coil which has the capability of joining these two polar opposite energies to create something spectacular.
When the electricity is supplied to these terminals, the flow of electrons heats up the filament and the glow begins.
Human beings can never get away from their inner struggle. It seems quite unfair, but that is how we were designed, like it or not. We were made to wrestle, but we were also made and hard wired to glow within the scuffle. The secret sauce to producing that glow? Connection. According to The law of conservation, energy can never be created or destroyed, it simply changes form. As humans we are made up of energy. We change and morph constantly from energized beings with light of joy to energized beings who glow dark with red madness. There has even been scientific evidence that points to our energy never really dying even after our bodies have expired.
Our energy is restless as it is eternal. It can never be extinguished but it can change. It can sparkle from a barely lit glitter to a bright firework. And how we feed that energy is how that energy decides to glow.
In order to really change form, alter it’s luster and showcase its full potential we must have a conductor, a “Tungsten Filament,” if you will. This conductor behaves like our connections we dare to forge.
A friend once shared an experience she had while taking a Lyft car. The driver was in tears, as he shared how his family home in St. Thomas had been leveled by Hurricane Irma. The friend left the car totally moved by this man’s story. That day the woman sent a significant donation to an island she had little connection to, other than through the man who drove her to a cafe. The loss was real. There are 7 billion people in the world, we randomly have the opportunity to meet not even an eighth of the folks who are on this planet, which makes me think, there must be a reason for connecting with each person.
Left to our own aloneness, we become dark and hallow. We cannot shine for others or remain “in search,” when we feel isolated. We just die. How many people died during the pandemic because of loneliness? According to Time magazine there are roughly 35.7 million Americans who live alone.
Like a light bulb gone out; we go dark barely flickering, like quiet static. To me the only answer on how to find meaning in this pervasive and mystifying world, is to search for that “Tungsten Filament” that binds us. We must search for our conductor. We must search for love, the only filament that truly grows our energy’s form. The only thing that lights us up, is the giving of one another, the giving of the polar opposites, the joining of two people who are so unlike one another, yet they create an energy that has no choice but to glow.
#nurture your glow
