A pet peeve I’ve learned over the past couple years is it drives me crazy when my kids leave their lights on in their bedrooms. I get it, total 1st world problem, but I’m sure many parents can empathize.
The other day I walked into one of my kids’ rooms in the middle of the day, sun shining bright, and yet there it was, the light was still on. My typical response is one of curiosity (and frustration) on whether my kids will ever figure it out. Instead, this time I tried to implement one of my behaviors I’m working to enhance, being more mindful of looking at situations of frustration from a different lens. Explore this different viewpoint with me…
I view this light as insignificant because the sun is already brightening up the room. Just because I see it as insignificant, does that mean everyone else does?
As I took a moment to pause and reflect, I started to see this light as an analogy to how we give support and love to others. When life is good and light is figuratively shining bright on those around us, the light in the form of our support and love we give may, in our mind, be insignificant to others. We tend to try to shine our light of support and love to those in moments of darkness and struggle where we feel it makes more of an impression.
I couldn’t agree more of how important it is to shine more light during times of darkness to others. Support and love during times of loss, mental health struggle, times of feeling lost, and so on are extremely impactful. While we tend to focus shining our light over towards spots of darkness, we can, at times, underestimate the impact our light has when someone appears to be on a bright part of their journey.
If I was to do a poll based on our ability to have good awareness, I have a feeling many of us would rate ourselves high. Reality is we’re not near as good as we think we are at having awareness for others’ emotions. Human behavior isn’t consistently successful picking up clues on whether another person, that may seem to be fine and shining bright, is actually in a moment of darkness. Our struggle at times with awareness may lead us to perceive this person as having plenty of light already shining on them, so we don’t think to direct any of our light of support and love their way.
I go back to my comment earlier – my viewpoint is the light being on while the sun is shining in is insignificant. The reality is my view is not necessarily the view of others. Even when the sun seems to be shining bright on someone, perception may be far from reality. While we may see someone that appears to be shining bright, we most often have no idea what they’re really dealing with. How they’re morning started, family dynamics, financial stress, or any other struggles they may be shouldering.
Try to resist the quick movement of the light you can provide to others just because someone seems to already have plenty of light. Our viewpoint of the situation is not always the reality – challenge yourself to shine that light of support and love even to those that already seem to have plenty of light. You never know when one of those moments may lead to someone saying, “you know, I really needed that today”.
While I will credit my kids driving me crazy leaving the light on for this perspective, it still drives me crazy when they do it 😊.
Take your step: We don’t always understand what others are going through so regardless, if there’s already light shining or that person is in a moment of darkness, we can always show up. Work on moving past first impressions on how someone is doing and progress towards more awareness. As we work to develop more awareness, we will start to see many opportunities to shine our brightness in ways we used to overlook.