The Great Light

All my younger cousins, and older cousins, and aunts, and uncles, and second cousins gathered around whoever bared the match that ignited the greatness that are fireworks, it was sort of weird, like being a bundle of flies fascinated by nothing but The Great Light. So, we all gathered around the bearer, and we watched. We watched him light The Gray Cylinder, and stand at bay. We all stared at that little dark thing and waited.

It all started with a simple line of smoke, then the sizzle of a spark; the indication—the alarm that alerted us all, the messenger that called—that greatness has almost arrived. Seconds later, sparks turned into a line of wonder and The Gray Cylinder erupted as it reached the inevitable, and it burst into The Great Light. The brightest stars bowed to their audience, and were soon devoured by the mouth of nature. It was beautiful. We’d all sit in silence, staring at silence.

And it’s this thing with fireworks that allowed my naïve 16-year-old-brain to truly dwell into The World of Philosophy. You see, when you look at that sudden outburst of stars, everything inside of you and around you are silenced because what you’re currently witnessing is nothing less than beautiful. Every other thing troubling you, every other person throwing rocks your way, over other nightmare you’ve had, just… dissolves. Your mind is immersed into the wonder sourced in The Great Light.

We experience The Great Light everyday, as well. You see, I’ve hit rock bottom, and I’ve been shot to kingdom come thousand of times, and even as I hid in the pit of my despair, there was always that silent line of smoke. Then there was a spark. And then there was The Great Light. The Great Light didn’t necessarily fix any of my problems, but it had given me what I thought I had lost. It gave me hope.

It’s today that I thought about all this. My cousins and I were playing around with water balloons, (I’m sixteen.) we then had to gather whatever was left of our destroyed balloons to clear up their lawn. I then decided to grab a pile of wet torn up pieces of dirty balloon (I’m sixteen), and rub it on my cousin’s cheek (I’m sixteen.). She was a natural avenger, though. So she grabbed a pile of wet-torn-up-dirty-pieces-of-whatever-was-left-of-our-balloons and she chased me around with it. I laughed as I ran. I laughed so hard, running was difficult, and she was laughing too.  So then I gave in, and she had her turn. I was still laughing, and she was still laughing, because, right then and there all that mattered was the moment. Everything else just vanished away. That was The Great Light.

I guess that’s what happiness is to me. Fleeting moments of utter joy, where all the demons of the world bury themselves for your sake, so that you could have a piece of The Great Light.

The point is, we’ll always be fighting and arguing and jumping over obstacles and pushing boundaries away and crying and sobbing and hitting rock bottom, but as long as that split of a second, fleeting yet everlasting moment of happiness somehow manages to ignite The Great Light, then everything’s going to be okay.

Plus, you can’t have The Great Light without The Gray Cylinder.