“What’s wrong with me?” I thought. “Why do I feel so flat?”
The answer wasn’t long in coming. “It’s that damn book,” I said. “It’s messing with my brain.”
Fresh off listening to “Wuthering Heights” and “Gone With The Wind,” I had hopped over to William Faulkner’s “Light in August,” featuring an amazing and eerie reading by Will Patton. But while the former two books had some realism — and Wuthering Heights certainly wasn’t a pick me up — they were nothing compared with the sheer brutality, violence and rawness that characterized Faulkner’s work. In fact, the characters and events are so stark that they disrupt an otherwise tranquil mind like a strong wind blowing through an origami museum. They remind us that, even though we may have never personally experienced it, evil exists. We also understand that far worse than any evil agents man has contrived is the mundane evil men do against each other and, unfortunately, against children.
After listening to the book, I wanted to better understand what it was all about, and so started to read the Wikipedia entry. In it, I came across a section on the title. Faulkner said:
“ . . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and — from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”
The title, however, means something different to me. As I thought about the book — and the horrible childhood endured by Joe Christmas in it — I thought back to a scene in “Gone With the Wind” in which Rhett goes out of his way to be nice to Scarlett’s child (Wade) after Scarlett has been, as usual, cruel and cold to the boy. Rhett takes the time to show Wade, by talking with him, that he matters, that he is not just something always in the way, that he can do things correctly. In short, Rhett takes the time to shed light.
I have read many blogs and pieces by industry folks about how and why they are living their lives; essentially, how they are evolving in their search for a meaningful existence. They are all — we are all — constantly trying to understand what matters so we can find meaning and experience a sense of fulfillment. When I think about what disturbed me so much in “Light in August,” I come to find it is the thought of those, especially children, who experience nothing but darkness; those who, one might say when they are older, never had a chance. And if that’s the case, doesn’t it makes sense to devote oneself to shedding as much light as possible?
This seems right to me, feels right, and doesn’t take all that much. As with many things, start at home and work your way out from there. No need to save those across the globe if there is suffering down the hall. Smile, pick up, encourage, congratulate, minimize failure, celebrate success (or even trying), look on the bright side and show that it’s not so bad. You have a choice every day, every hour, to be a light or let shade reign, let darkness persist even when it would take so little to dispel it.
So, perhaps, get out of your office this afternoon and walk the hospital halls. Keep your eye out for a forlorn looking kid — visiting a sick parent or sibling — in the hallway. If you see one, give a smile and say something like, “How are you doing? I run the computers in this place,” and see what they do. I bet their eyes might just light up.
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