The Little Light of My Life...

This post has also been published in World of Moms!

I have been looking for the little light of mine. I have been looking for it forever! For almost throughout my life that I can look back at, I’ve been in this search. In search of that - that fills me up, that - that makes me realize the true myself, that – that will excavate my whole, my innermost, my hidden, buried core of entity. That - what will bring out the best from me, someday… I’ve been searching for my light, for my pathfinder, almost forever.

For long, I had wondered that it must be a man, a lover. Like the fairytales say, I too believed that the happy ending lay in a charming gallant knight in golden robes and shining silver armor, on a horseback, trotting the way from nowhere to here where I were, to take me away to a land of self discovery, happiness, fulfillment. An ivory tower, perhaps! For a very long time, I’ve searched for self actualization in love, in romance, in partnership.

Foolish, I was!

 
 
Later, when the lamp inside me had flickered, shone bright, almost died and rose again, finally to give way to a steady, warm gleam that is no longer as restless, as directionless as youth had been, I look at myself again. Gone are the days when I dreamed like crazy, when I believed in that miracle that I’ve been secretly chosen for, one that no one else would know or find. That little girl, that adolescent who grew up thinking the world is hers and some day, one day, magic would befall, was now grown up; perhaps, she was tired too!
 

But, have I been able to find my light, I ask. I wonder…
 

In the recent years, if I’ve ever been waiting for a light to kindle, it is perhaps only in form of a light at the end of the tunnel. I was no longer waiting for a light of miracle to be bestowed upon me; I was down to just hoping for just a light to show me the path. I was lost on my way in life, and I was tired to find it myself. I was, just, looking for a ray of hope, a light!

And then, years later - a small light was born inside me in shape of a tiny, very tiny, human being. I remember the precise moment when I first saw her. So long cocooned in the dark warm of the inside of my womb, it was her first encounter with the world at large. She was perhaps a little insecure, a bit unsure of what was waiting for her outside of me. She blinked her tiny eyes, her tiny eyelashes, as she was adjusting to the light around her. And then she, oh so very slightly, had turned her head to look around. It was then that she first spotted me, lying right beside her, numbed all the way down and yet looking at her in all the eagerness and anticipation of the world. She spotted me, and fixed her gaze on me. I looked back at her, too. And then, she smiled. That moment, that precise moment of smile - it lit inside me a light.

All of four years now, she continues to be my fallback upon every time that I am lost again, every time that I feel I do not know the way from here. Ever since, for me she has become a reason, and rhyme too, in this world of whirlwind, cacophony, blind lanes.
 
 
 
But, is this the light I had always been looking for? While it is part of it, yet, it is perhaps not the same light that I had been looking for all this while, I wonder…
 

I think, I’ve still been looking for the light. I ask myself - what is this light, what does this light do?

 

This light… it works in me in a strange way. While it is the light, it is as well as its own shadow. It is bright, and it is darkness too - in the shape of hope, as well as in despair. It is kind, and then, it is ruthless too. It shows me the way, and then it takes it away. It unifies all that’s virtuous inside me, and all that I want improve upon. It creates in me a mission, and then, it makes me lose my way in it too. It starts in me a dream, and then it puts before me the hurdles that would not let me get at it – because, it wants me to cross the oceans and the seas. It kindles in me the need to do what I love, and the sense of grief of not having got there where I should have gone. And yet, it leads me.

That little light of mine is my guiding star – it guides me through my conscience, it guides me through my heart!

 
But then I ask myself - what is this light, really?
 

Is it Faith – I wonder! Yes, perhaps. It is my faith in the concept of Life, the larger scheme of things in this huge, huge space in the universe that I am, howsoever minuscules, yet a very part of. It is perhaps my faith on the Universe, the Earth, and on the phenomenon of just being born, of living. It is my faith, my spirituality, my sense of worship.

Is it not Love, then? Yes, that too! It indeed is Love - the very bond that ties me with the rest of the Universe. It is love that makes me put those who I love before me when it comes to decide. It is love, that illuminates the core of my thoughts, my creations, my world. That little light – it is love, too      

Is it Hope? Oh yes! That little light of mine is another name for Hope. It is the reason I get up every morning, because I hope the day ahead will be beautiful and glorious; because I hope, it will be worth living the day. On the days that I am particularly down, that little light works on me like an angel. With a wand in her hand, it weaves into me the dream so that I still get up and march ahead in this maze that they call life. It lights up a hope.

But, and the end of all, it is perhaps Magic. The magic of the bare fact that we are here, right here, to born and to live; to make a difference, to leave a mark. The very fact, the very basics, that we exist – isn’t that a sheer magic, too?

I’ve long been looking for the light, and now, this time, I know where it lies. It lies within me! The little light of mine is here, right here, deep side me. I can feel it. The little light of mine is the core of me, myself! It lies inside me, somewhere deep inside my very own self, buried, unexcavated, secret.
 

And I am still looking for it, just how I am still looking for myself.