Diaphanous

Shine through. That’s what we all can do.

Some of my best moments in life have been the ones in which I’ve been the most transparent. I’m not necessarily talking about stark “truth-telling”; the full expression of our thoughts or the way that we feel at any point in time is often fraught with bias, loaded with emotion, and misguided by self-righteousness. The question “can I be honest?” is not uniformly followed by insightful, compassionate, and supportive commentary. Rather, it can be an entree to “let me tell you how I really feel”, a typically quick slip on the slick slope of bitterness, jealousy, and other selfish impulses. What I may be thinking or feeling at any moment should be subject to filter – or perhaps only shared with a counselor, spiritual sage, or some other objective professional or person whose role is only to listen, not to be changed.

The state of being ‘shined through’ is very different. In such a state, I am neither self-serving nor judgmental. There is no desire to be right. There is only presence. Like a bulb turned on from an influential source, there is current, then connection, and finally light. The incandescent bulb in your table lamp takes no credit for the current coursing through it. It seeks no reward for its role in day-to-day activities. It simply bridges, a thin filament of linkage converting electricity into luminescence. A switch is thrown and a resistant thread of metal heats until it glows. Electricity, thrust into an airless or inert space, is transformed into light.

It is no easy task to be airless. The space of our consciousness is anything but inert. We are constantly surveying our environment with our senses, processing a steady stream of information from the world around us, thinking, thinking about our thinking, assessing our situations, reasoning, reacting. We are so busy staying busy that we too easily can mistake what is us versus what is flowing through us. Consequently, we can miss opportunities to be filaments in the cosmic flow of interconnectedness. Or, when we serve as those bridges, we can misinterpret the experience. That was me, I might think. Look at me. The light from your table lamp never asks to be looked at. Instead, it allows you to see.

“That was great advice.”

Like most of us, I’ve been thanked for my advice more than once. It warms me to remember such occasions now. But some of my best advice I don’t recall giving. For others, if I do remember the situation, I am reminded of how I felt after I shared the perspective than of the insight itself. Where did that come from? I distinctly recall thinking at different times in my life. Oh gosh, I hope that was helpful. Who was I to say that? It feels good to be appreciated, yes. It feels strange, however, to be thanked for something that I either have forgotten or something for which I have no reason to be extended acknowledgment.

“I have no idea why I said that,” I once told someone, in response to a time-delayed note of thanks. To someone else: “I said that?” To another: “You may be remembering that wrong. It was probably someone else because, well, honestly, I think I was probably too focused on myself to have given anything resembling good advice for someone else.” That last statement still applies today.

Which is perhaps why I am drawn to the word “diaphanous”. And to the current circumstances in Ukraine, to the combative nature of communications in the United States, to the seemingly cyclical propensity of our species to overlook the advice of our ancestors. Some of best and worst guidance in history is memorialized in print, in audio recordings, and even in film. It is there, it is right there, before us, and with us. How can we let the past teach us? How can we seek to learn from both it and the present in a spirit of giving, of growing, rather than one of owning, of holding?

“Seeing through” something is very different to “shining through”. The first is potentially intrusive, is proudful, is more about what I can perceive rather than how you can benefit. The latter – shining through, the original meaning of the PIE word root bha – embodies the potential for radiation, for luminosity, for participation in a causal chain that depends on me but is not about me. Who or what wants or needs to ‘shine through’ our current world and its challenges? We can answer “nothing”, or resort to the breakthrough of “evil” or “tragedy”. But those are excuses, aren’t they. They represent a refusal to stretch ourselves in directions and ways that we are born to do. Because can choose to be part of the solution, not just bystanders to or recipients of the challenges. We can decide to reach out, in smalls moments and large, to others. We can answer the call of our time with a declaration in favor of goodness, of virtue, of the spirit that binds us to each other, to everything around us, to what has come before us and what will come after us. We can be the conduit for goodness to shine through.

It is nice to learn in our lives that we have made a difference in the world. It is nicer to know that we sometimes have made a difference despite our individual desires or needs to do so. Instead of indifference, or inaction, let’s try consciously to become part of the path of what is good and what is possible. Let’s never forget that light only shines when there are filaments of change willing to reach out and be energized.