StreetLight

I sat watching the street light in the early morning on Diwali day, stray thoughts....as usual engulfed me.

Sometimes, I thought, we treat life like that area of illumination around the street light, forgetting there is something outside that narrow space...

Looking under a streetlight to find a lost object at night is an apt metaphor for classic approaches to our search in life. You typically search for answers to your life problems within a region or the space surrounding the knowledge we possess. It may not be where the answer is, but it’s an easy place to search! In practice the “streetlight” can be narrow and bright, or be broad and dim, somewhat like the knowledge and wisdom we possess.

Searching under the streetlight, is seemingly desirable, but if the object is actually “in the dark” it is a futile endeavor.

An old story has it that a man came across a drunk looking under a street lamp one night. The drunk said he was looking for his keys which he had dropped. After helping him search unsuccessfully under the lamp he asked the drunk exactly where he had lost his keys. The drunk replied, "Somewhere over there in the dark, but I can't see a thing over there so I'm looking under the light instead."

Like the drunk man, sometimes we are looking for our answers at wrong places.

Borrowed from a couplet; In life, I believe we have to change the way, we look at things – so that the things we look at "change"!