Lesson from the Northern Lights
As opposed to a solar eclipse, the experience of which cannot be easily caught on camera, because of the cooling of temperature as darkness descends, the quietening down of birds, the shivers, and the magical glint of the diamond ring as the eclipse becomes full, the Northern Lights can seem the opposite. What I mean is when they are full on, they can be a god-affirming experience, I am told. I saw them recently, and they were on the lower end of the intensity scale, and my experience of them was still pretty heart-racing and magical. In fact, I think some of the elation was due to the fact that the lights are notoriously an uncertain, unpredictable, phenomenon, so the waiting was full of hope and anticipation and anything actually, even a glimmer of green in the sky, filled me with elation. Leaving that aside, they also seem to be seen by different people with varying intensity. So, whereas I could see the lights strongly fill one corner of a big sky sometimes, it looked like light pollution (not even greenish) to my husband. This made me reflect. Upon being woken up in the middle of the night because the 'lights were here', I asked the guide where they were and he pointed all over the sky. I saw whitish light pollution. Did his eyes actually see green, as mine had when my husband's had seen white? Or was he doing what I ended up doing to my husband. 'They are all over the sky. Can't you see it? Green, pink and even some specks of purple.' I did let him know later I was teasing. Were there any glasses to help him see what I saw... to help me see what the guide saw.. or was it all a game? Because when we took photos and looked at them, everyone in the group admitted they looked nothing like what we saw... they were much more magical than the real thing. This made me wonder about the assets we see in others and how this is guided by our perceptions. When I hadn't had a story published I was admiring of the writers in a Penguin anthology I picked up. When my story got published in it the following year, I downgraded the talent or skill required for that and got to admiring the published best-sellers. Was I not recognising a skill or achievement? Or was it simply that I had those skills and once organised them towards a goal, could achieve it too... this should help in goals I have. After all, I may not have specific talent, but I do have the experience of being goal-oriented and persevering as well as following through. Those are the skill most achievers say are needed in abundance. So maybe this is a chance to re-evaluate what I think is needed for a goal and putting that into play, a little at a time. What about you?
Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance. C. W. Wendte
