Of Light Bulbs and Laser Beams

April 28, 2010 – Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

“I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.”
—John 12:46

During this recent time of personal and professional transition, I’ve reflected a lot on the meaning and purpose of my work. I am leaving a job to pursue another, related role in the same field, but many of the specific projects I’ve initiated will pass into other hands…or, quite likely, will pass away altogether. This has contributed to my sense of loss and mourning, and my doubts about the impact I’ve made.

With these feelings lingering in the margins of my spirit, I was particularly struck by a comment in John Maeda’s terrific book, The Laws of Simplicity, which we have recently used in contemplative leadership study with one of my work teams:

I was once advised by my teacher Nicholas Negroponte to become a light bulb instead of a laser beam, at an age and time in my career when I was all focus. His point was that you can either brighten a single point with laser precision, or else use the same light to illuminate everything around you. Striving for excellence usually entails the sacrifice of everything in the background for the same of attending to the all-important foreground. I took Negroponte’s challenge as a greater goal of finding the meaning of everything around, instead of just what I directly faced.

There’s probably no better metaphor for the way I’ve approached my own work than a laser beam: hot, intense, searing, cutting away that which I deem imperfect and constructing the ideal product. My approach has worked for me in a number of ways, but being a laser beam, as Maeda notes, brightens only a single point at a time. And it will be many of those specific points of my work that will likely fade away or be tossed away with my departure.

What real impact I leave will be relative to the extent I’ve served, unwittingly, as a light bulb. Where I have brought some illumination, some warmth, some insight, some larger perspective, the light will likely remain.

That light is the light of the divine, shining through me, by grace. I know this because I was trying to be a laser beam and was oblivious to the warmer, softer light that was emanating around me anyway. And this is the light that will guide me in the next chapter of my story.

Light of the World, you have lead me through darkness though I foolishly thought I was leading the way. Humble me and give me wisdom, so that I might know when to be a laser and when to be a light bulb. And may I have the grace to see that either way, the light is yours. Amen.