Trailing Light

I was walking around campus after dark tonight.

I needed some time to myself, and anywhere indoors just wasn’t going to work this time.

I passed through a courtyard and sat down on a bench for a while. I was so absorbed in thoughts and worries that I didn’t even register an interesting phenomenon: when I had walked past the little waist-high lamp posts that ringed the courtyard, they brightened noticeably beyond their original light. I only realized what had happened a moment later: one of them turned back down to its previous level, but the one nearest to me had stayed brighter, as if detecting my presence. Which I suppose it was, on an un-sentient, electronic level.

I tested my sudden intuition about the lights by moving towards the post that had recently dimmed. As I approached, it quickly grew brighter again, welcoming me back into another circle of light. Each post I passed did the same, and by the end of the courtyard the first had dimmed again, so that their light followed my path like a fading afterimage to show that someone had been there.

Now, I’m sure you’re reading this and thinking ‘Nice story, but what does it have to do with folk knowledge?’

Well, I’ll tell you.

Of course, seeing those lights, I remembered hundreds of lessons, talks and metaphors that could apply to that situation, especially spiritual ones. We use the concept of light an awful lot in our speech and teaching. And I wondered for a while why that was.

We need light to see, to make our way in the unknown. We learn, perhaps unconsciously, to fear dark places and what they might hide. This seems to me one of the more lingering so-called 'primitive' or 'natural' instincts possessed by people from all backgrounds. Light is so fundamentally connected to our psyche as a people that we cannot separate ourselves from using it to teach.

Light is the source of all life on the Earth. This is true both literally as science understands 'light', and spiritually as we understand Light, as in the Light of Truth, the Light of the World. Cut off from light, everything would soon fade and die; cut off from Light, the same thing happens to our spirits and our faith.

The quest for light of both kinds, conducted by mankind in general throughout all our thousand years of life on this planet, can be seen in our constant drive to banish the night from our houses and cities. In ancient times we used candles and fires; in modern times, we use floodlights, headlights, and neon lights.

I mean, we automatically know, watching Star Wars, that the guy dressed all in black (darkness) is probably not someone that you would want to hang out with too much. Did anyone teach us that? Did your parents ever tell you "Always remember: guys wearing black are more likely to be criminals."? Probably not. It's just one of those things that we pick up almost as soon as we can follow the plot of any movie. Why is the dichotomy of light/dark so deeply ingrained in us, even in a society where we have cities that never sleep, roads and cars that surround us with glistening lamps, and even campus walkways with automatic lightposts? Shouldn't we have moved on to more realistic types of fears, in a way?

To me, it shows the effect of all those years before, all the ideas and themes of past stories that lingers on even today. Stories even from very ancient times associate darkness with danger, suspense, or the unknown:

"amid the Scyldings a scathing monster,/

dark ill-doer, in dusky nights/

shows terrific his rage unmatched..."

Source

Literary proof shows that the idea of light associated with danger and so on can be traced back to almost the earliest texts we have. By contrast, light is also an important symbol, even in the Bible: "Let there be light" is probably one of the most famous statements from the Old Testament.

In fact, that is probably the reason that Light is so significant in metaphor, analogy, and parable. Light is always understood by the learner or listener to be good, a desirable thing, associated with purity, holiness, happiness, safety, and so on. Therefore, we use it to describe those things that we consider to be good. This old fixation on light is seen in our language as well: English especially has so many words for light, illumination, brightness, glow, luminescence, shine, and so on, that I couldn't ever be sure I knew them all. We use the idea of light in everyday turns of phrase and idioms (seeing the light, in the dark, etc.) and even jokes (how many BYU students does it take to change a lightbulb? A: I don't know. If you have a good one, put it in your comment).

My main point is that it's no coincidence that we seem fixated on the idea of light. Light has always been important to our survival, and Light always will be. Through the years the ideaof both kinds has been cemented in our minds; through society's views in general, and through the lessons we learn from those we come into contact with, even if those lessons are learned unconsciously, and even taught unconsciously.

Such is the power of folk knowledge, passing down through time to help each new generation learn the truths that their fore bearers knew, if only through metaphorical means.