A Thousand Tiny Suns

I spent an hour this morning trying to untangle a string of fairy lights I pulled from the attic. They were knotted into a stubborn, messy ball, and for a while, I felt that familiar prickle of frustration. But as I finally pulled the last loop free and plugged them in, the room suddenly felt different. It wasn’t just the brightness; it was the way each tiny bulb seemed to hold its own little promise of warmth. We spend so much of our lives moving through the shadows of our own worries, rarely stopping to notice the small, flickering points of light that surround us. It is easy to feel small when the world feels vast and dark, yet there is something incredibly brave about a single flame holding its ground against the night. We are all just trying to keep our own little fires burning, aren’t we? I wonder what it would feel like if we all chose to look for the glow in each other instead of the dark.

Sudeep Mehta has captured this feeling perfectly in his image titled Light up My World. It reminds me that even in the middle of a crowd, we can find a quiet, glowing space of our own. Does this image make you feel a sense of peace, too?