Shine Brighter
on being a weather vane and a beautiful contagion
Be the change you want to see in the world. This doesn’t have to solely apply to the world at large, this can apply, and perhaps should best apply, to your personal insular world. Be the person, the example, you wish to see in those around you.
This is a lesson learned by every parent, for the mimicry of children is humbling. From repeated curse words to mannerisms to the way teenagers mirror our own reactions, children are the first and greatest lesson in this. But I have come to find, not the only.
My mood, my approach to my family, is reflected straight back at me. At others. It is a ripple affect of response that squeezes my chest. Humbling, empowering, and exhausting. No matter the intentions of my family, it’s true that my mood is somehow the guiding light here. The determination of the day’s mood.
We are told to surround ourselves with people we want to be like, for we will become them. At least, in part. It is true and it also goes both ways, which is something I haven’t considered enough before. That you must be what you desire from those you are surrounded by. You cannot force anything upon another. You cannot force a mood, a behavior, an attitude, not even or maybe especially on a child. You must model. You must hold that within yourself and let it shine outward, a ray of sun to be caught. A beautiful contagion.
Caught by someone needing the infection of goodness. Of patience, understanding, grace, love, light. We all need it sometimes, to be shone upon by another. No one is sunshine always and clouds are inevitable. But if you want sunshine on your own skin, you might need to be the light for others.
It’s cliché, it’s simple. It’s also painfully true. I find I must practice this extra, not only because I am a weather vane, but because I am a chameleon, shifting and morphing to match my surroundings. A trait that can be harnessed for good or can twist me into something I don’t recognize. It happens slowly, the taking on of others, the morphing and mimicking. It isn’t overnight, but like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass until you are empty of yourself, full of someone else. Only then, and maybe not even then, can you flip it over and let the sands fill back into yourself.
And harder, hardest, yet is when the people you love most on earth are the people whose cloudy days you allow to shadow you, to glaze vision over with muddled grey and blot out the internal sunshine of self. It doesn’t make them bad people, but it means the cycle of storms is brewing into something dangerous. Sometimes earth-altering. It takes courage, it takes strength, and it takes a lot of empathy to be the one to step back and shine.
To wipe off the raindrops and polished the dingy window, to sparkle up and shine brighter than the clouds. We’ve all heard be the bigger person but maybe it really ought to be something along the lines of shine brighter. Someone else might need it, and they might pick up that sparkle of light you’ve thrown their way, and melt it into themselves. To shine a bit brighter for the next person, or to shine it straight back, brilliantly, at you.