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Hi there,

Back in the spring I wrote about the return of the light, how it comes back almost imperceptibly at first and then all at once. Lately I have been thinking about the reverse. The clocks have just changed, the evenings arrive earlier, and the slow brightening I was so busy relishing in May has quietly turned into a slow dimming.

Diwali arrives right on time for this, which I have come to think is the point. It is a festival of light, of optimism, of new beginnings, and it is placed deliberately in the dark part of the year. Nothing about it assumes the light will show up on its own. The lamps are lit on purpose, one at a time, by hand.

What I love most is how a diya works. A flame lit from another flame takes nothing away from the first. I wrote in June that when you find something exceptional, you share it, and I think that is the whole physics of Diwali. Light is the one thing that multiplies when it is passed along.

It has also changed how I think about optimism. I used to (and honestly sometimes still do) treat it as a mood, something you either woke up with or did not. But I have been practicing something new: perhaps seeing the light, and being optimistic, is less a feeling than a practice, the habit of asking what would be joyful (a question we have been putting next to "what to create" all year at Brightland), and then lighting that small thing on purpose.

So here is my wish for this Diwali. Light something small, on purpose, and pass it to someone. A candle, a dish, a phone call, a generous pour of oil over something warm. See what the dark does with it.

Happy Diwali, to everyone who celebrates and everyone who is simply glad to be a part of the light.

Warmly,