Here’s one of those things you aren’t supposed to admit. You know that song with the lyrics: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”? I hated that song for years. I found it too trite, too singsong, too Snow-White-hanging-outthe-window-with-a-bluebird-on-herfinger. Insufferable.
Then I watched my son sing it.
He wore his too-long church pants, with his mismatched black dress shoes (Him: “But Mama, this shoe is a 3 and this one is a 4!” Me: “Oh. Ouch. You only have to wear them for two hours. Deal with it.”) His clip-on tie hung crooked on his white shirt like a pony’s tail dangling.
He was one in a line of 7-year-olds, each holding a lit candle. They formed a straggly line across the front of a room filled with parents, all smiling and wondering who thought it a good idea to give a barely contained line of 7-year-olds lit candles.
With that picture in mind, especially the innocence of each of those children, I can now find the song’s message oddly irresistible (and the tune still grating).
Trite though it may be, we are all, at every stage in our lives, those same children trying to protect our candles from any stiff, nasty wind.
We are called to do this protecting for ourselves. We are called to do it for others, too. It’s one of our jobs.
Once, long ago and thousands of miles away, I had a terrible teacher. He was mean and so full of fragile ego it hurt him to see his students shine in any light at all. He used shame and derision as teaching tools. He snuffed people out if they flared.
Of course, few of us knew this at the time. We were too caught up in the race to please him. Week after week, we sank deep into our studies and came up for air like frolicky children in cold water — full of breathy discoveries, and high from the zip-zam-pow of connections we were forming. Learning forced us to evaluate what we thought we knew, and we watched our world grow bigger (“So much I still don’t know!”) and smaller (“Oh, now I understand!”) simultaneously.
The world was full of possibility. It was like visiting dark, interesting and separate rooms for months, and then suddenly having fat tunnels of light open up to connect them all.
We felt smart. We had something to say, something to add. We were having a ball.
So, this is what he did: He asked us what we’d learned. When I spoke first, he leaned toward me, over a desk, looking increasingly irritated. His eyebrows cinched at the bridge of his nose. His body language feigned concern. And then he cut me off. “You’re thinking nothing new,” he said. “You are not the first one to think of any of this. You’re not being original. You haven’t contributed anything here. You know that, right?”
I stopped breathing. The hot cut filled the room.
When things are new in us, and if we are lucky all our lives long things will be new in us, they present themselves as small and growing flames. Any bigger, brighter fire can, of course, overwhelm the smaller flicker. It’s the old, “Mine is bigger than yours.”
Some wiser part of me knew at the time he had just broken the cardinal rule of teaching, or for that matter, friendship, or love of any kind: You don’t snuff out light and excitement; you build it.
There will always be those who try to extinguish you with doubt, or shame or hindrances even more subtle. They say, “Wow — but do you really think that’s sensible?” And what they mean is, “Not you.”
These bad people are really saying, “Sit down. Shut up.” They feel better if they can show you how regular you are, if they can convince you you’re not special.
But you are.
It’s the good people who help you rise and find your voice. It’s the good people who sometimes keep their ideas to themselves, and let you discover the small and growing strength of your own wisdom.
This year, duck the blowhards. Shine on brightly. Light, and burn hot.
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
