This past holiday season my neighbors and I decided to coordinate our porch decorations to tie the neighborhood together. It was a cute candy cane theme that was easy to do and be creative. We enjoyed the idea that our block would feel unified, festive and bright.
Then most of us took down our decorations and at the beginning of February, and the neighborhood was suddenly plunged into darkness. Like a vacuum-all the light out was sucked out of the block. It was weird, eerie even.
I read a few years ago, leaving Christmas lights on the porch during the winter months can help individuals with seasonal depression, but I might say, it makes people in general feel better as they see the pretty lights and the energy of their warmth is transferred. While I felt how real that could be, nothing made this idea more obvious than when the neighborhood took the lights down this year.
Valentine’s Day being this week, some celebrate, some don’t. I could do a whole thing on self-love and probably will some day, but not on a week where it will fall short to do what it needs to because it’s playing into forced energy.
So instead, I want to propose something. Leave your porch light on Wednesday night. If you have something else you can turn on, go for it, but what if for that night, a night when some people feel the most lonely, you offer a kindness-the safety of your light. There are a few thousand people on this newsletter. What would it mean in our community to have a few thousand lights on? A person coming home from a first date gets a little more light to come home to. Your neighbor comes home to an empty house greeted with a little extra light from next door. What would it mean for you to come home to something like that?
Take this moment to put a reminder in your phone or set your timer for Wednesday and for the night, leave the porch light on to energetically give the outside world a loving hug.
Light it up,
~Carmen