It's All In The Lighting

My "day job" is in the television industry. I have worked behind the scenes for twenty (plus) years in either the production (technical) side or as a producer. There are so many different life lessons that I could talk about just from this career path that I have chosen, but let's focus (pun intended) on one aspect right now: lighting.

In television, the camera will only show what can be seen, and if you want to see something beautifully, it needs to be lit well. Creative lighting can hide or illuminate things in the scene, and in doing so, it can create a beautiful composition on the screen. However, if the wrong area is lit, you will see things that should not be seen.

Let's think about this in terms of life with COPD. What you continually keep highlighted is what will keep your focus. If you are constantly highlighting the negative parts of your life, everything that you cannot do anymore, all that you are missing out on, and what you might miss later, then you will miss all of the wonderful things that you have right in front of you.

In television it would be like shining a bright light on the cables and equipment in a normally dark corner. We don't want to see anything other than what is intended for the shot. If that bright light is shining on equipment, my bet is that you will stare at the gear instead of the talent on the screen. Your focus is in the wrong place.

However, if you keep the positive things that you have in life highlighted, you will be able to focus on what is good. This is one thing that can help you push through. If your brightest lights and best focus is on love for your family, making memories whenever and wherever possible and even just on the next plan that you've made, your ability to push through could be given fresh strength.

Here is another use of lighting. You can use it to tell part of the story. For example, you may have seen a set with lights and cables visible, as if you are seeing everything unfold from a different angle. Even in those types of sets, the lighting is more even across the area. You may be seeing "behind the scenes" but it does not distract from the overall content of the piece.

I believe that it is important to understand where you have been and where you are going. Living a positive life does not mean that you ignore what you have been through. It means that you know where you have been, you know what you are going through, and you know that the reality is that life could be worse. That's right. It could be worse. Most of the time, no matter how bad it is, there is someone else that is worse, and when it is time for your journey to end, I pray that you can say, some of this was really hard, but life in general could have been worse.

So I challenge you to think about what you are highlighting. Where are the lights of your mind focusing? Are they focusing on all that is wrong in your life or what is going right? Maybe it is time to turn off a few lights focused in the wrong place, and turn on a few other lights focusing on what is beautiful and good.