I remember walking home from teaching one night in Brooklyn and I saw two men working on a car in the dark. They were trying to replace the front tire and one man was holding a lamp so the other could see what he was doing. He looked up, saw me coming and said with a smile, “sometimes it’s hard to be the one who has to hold the light”. My spirit immediately lifted with this interaction.

What he said resonated with me. In my experience, I’ve had a hard time staying “bright” or full when it’s felt like others try to take or snuff out that light within me. It’s taken me until now to realize that it can’t be taken and that any dissonance I feel internally and in life, I create.

And, of course, it was funny because this guy was really just standing there while the other guy was working away at the “hard stuff”. Except both were equally needed in this moment.

I tend towards the “hard” or always have. Toward the “serious”. Even if that means negating the lightness of being that feels so good. When it has come up, I sometimes limit it. It’s uncontrollable and sometimes scary and sometimes I just feel amazingly full and emanating bright energy.

Teaching fills me up in this bright way. Offering Reiki does too.

When I was home recently I started to let some of that “serious” energy go. Not that I have to and not because it’s “bad” but because I’m so well practiced in it, I need more of the other – the “lighter side of life”. I laughed more. I defended less. In this light, I accepted more of who I am. I remembered a teacher who always says that “enlightenment is a process of lightening up – don’t take yourself so seriously”. I reflected on how I tend to get caught up in the “shoulds” of life (the ones I’ve been taught and the belief systems and energy I’ve lived in) and I started to move beyond them. That I don’t need to beat myself up for the path I’m choosing – wondering if it’s the “right” one – instead I can stop seeing it as this serious thing and simply commit. Open the door and see. From this incredible amount of commitment instantly came deep peace. Lightness. Ease.

On or around February 1st we celebrate Imbolc – the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The moment where we can see a return to the light. Moving from the darkness and starting to open up to the seeds of creativity and fertility. For me, this also means continuing to not take myself so seriously. To laugh more (even or especially at myself) and to see even those harder aspects of life with the welcoming embrace of light.