Light's True Brightness

"I read an interview he [Rick Fields] did for a Bhuddhist quarterly recently, in which he said that he's so savoring the moments of his life right now, so acutely aware of love and small pleasures that he no longer feels that he has a life-threatening disease: he now says he's leading a disease-threatening life." -Anne Lamott

This next line came to me as my plane was landing in Spokane, back when I was still barely healthy enough to go to school. But I was so afraid I would forget it, and it meant too much to me, that literally as we were decending and feet from the ground I rifled through my backpack under the seat of the person in from of me for a pen or pencil and anything I could write on. all I could reach was the book I was reading: Night Fall by Nelson DeMille. (A little helpful advice, do not read that book while on or near a plane. Or any Nelson DeMille really. It will only scare you into trusting absolutely no one and almost having a panic attack.) But I grabbed the book and wrote this in the back of it as quickly as possible, all the while seriously concerning the person next to me by my actions.

 Now I know why a writer should never be without a pen and pad. 

Only in the solitary pitch-blackness of the dark can you experience Light's true brightness.

When life is that bad, that dark, that broken, those moments of Light will be brighter than they ever were when life was more or less going your way. You will finally appreciate them for what they are: pure Light, pure joy, pure goodness. 

It's so hard for me to imagine being healthy. A part of me would do almost anything to be healthy again. But the other part realizes I could so easily get caught up in life going well, these moments would lose some of their brightness, and that saddens me. May there be a way for life to get better, and for these moments to never stop shining so brightly.