One Little Candle

I am slowly returning to normal. I’ve spent two weekends away from the apartment, and it’s helped a lot. Of course, as I prepare to return as of the writing of this (Sunday evening), I’m starting to get sad and anxious again.

The news isn’t helping. Al Jazeera’s entire news crew in Gaza has confirmed to have been killed. I read a headline that said many AI tech CEOs are choosing not to have children because they’re of the mind that there won’t be a world for them… in part because of how destructive AI is. Make that make sense. Democracy is crumbling before our very eyes in the one place that prides itself on being the bastions of democracy; and those that cry freedom are the ones doing the most ardent and violent oppression.

Everywhere the news is dark and depressing, and I fear that, save for a few people, humanity has lost its soul entirely. As a collective, we are lost, and a few people seem to be willing to hasten it all… and those are the few people that have the means to do it.

I’m tired and I’m sad, and I’m so, so angry. But this anger is impotent. What can I do? I’m only one person. And the tide of evil over humanity has become as a thick pall of darkness that I, a little wavering candle, can do so little about.

All I can do is look after my little corner of the world. I can be kind to everyone I meet… or try. Sometimes it can incredibly difficult. I can try and limit my plastic use. I can choose to spend my money at places that aren’t the actual worst™. But there feels little point. I’m just one me. And everything feels so big and overwhelming.

I am not a main character. I’m just some background NPC to whom the programmers couldn’t even be bothered to give any lines. I watch movies and read books about heroes, both fictional and real, who did the thing. But they are not me, and I am not them. It all feels so devastatingly overwhelming sometimes.

What can I do?

Nothing. Except the little that I can. Is it enough? No. One little candle alone cannot hold back the darkness.

But still, it isn’t nothing at all.

I may not be a hero myself, but I can write stories of them; the same kinds of stories that help me have hope in my moments of deepest despair. Maybe others will one day find them, and enjoy a little hope of their own. Even if only for a little while, that’s still a worthy thing.

In these stories, both in fiction and in life, there are times when surely it people must have felt as I do now. That the darkness is so consuming, so pervasive, so overwhelming. That people everywhere seem to have given up; abdicated their responsibility to do anything at all; that humanity has forgotten what it means to be human. That is all seems so hard, so hopeless.

And in these stories there are people who still stood up. Who still did the thing. That’s what made them heroes. Because they did the thing no one else seemed capable of. Because they stood up and fought back. Their little candles became mighty blazes, and the darkness shrank back.

It feels so inadequate to just create stories in these times. But that’s all I can do, other than being kind (or try), speaking out when I have the opportunity, training an army of women… Only joking about that last one. Sort of.

One candle can light another. Which may go on to light another. And another. And another. So that maybe one candle could turn into many, enough to create a mighty blaze, enough to shrink the darkness.

I can’t do much. And it makes me cry. But I can, for as long as I survive, be a little candle. As long as there is one little candle, there is a hope, however slim, that the darkness can be held back.

I will hold that little candle for as long as I can.