Do Not Let Anyone Dim Your Light

Do not let someone dim your light because it is shining in their eyes. What a powerful saying. I got it from my friend in California, who is a delightful motivational speaker. Her name is Jaime Kalman Chipko and her dad is an email pal of mine. He is an actor and a fine one at that and his stage name is Brian StAugust. Jaime just became a first time mother and Brian a first time grandfather. Their lights are shining and sparkling over little Olivia’s birth.

Brian and I met through the email and it is interesting. I had bought or rather my husband   bought me for an anniversary present a turquoise/blue ring and I took it to be sized. That day another young woman had bought one too, the exact one and she was picking up her sized ring. We got to talking and she is delightful actress too and we email now and then and her name is Neva Krauss. Somehow from emailing her, I met Brian because he is a friend of hers too.

This Internet ability gives a fine area of meeting some excellent new friends that we would never have known. Some live in our vicinity and others way across the country. We have the same likes and this is how we get together. My dear friend Steven Behr of Steilacoom, Washington and I got together via the email and he often lights a light in my heart because of his never ending inspiring me. He says I inspire him and others with my stories of encouragement; but it is really the other way around. He is a Wellness Educator and he lights up the lights of his senior students in his classes.

I have hundreds of these kinds of pals. It is delightful.

When I was a little girl, all our friends lived right on our block or around the corner. Then when we went to junior high school (now called middle school) we had new friends if we went to a different school than some of our younger friends.

Then we went to high school and lo and behold we now again had a whole group of new friends.

When I was almost thirty-four, I went to get a college education while having two young children ages three and seven and I met new friends again. There was a woman a bit older than me and she hardly talked to anyone in our class. We went to California the summer of my first semester. She had never said Hi to me or even looked at me.We were in a park there and as we were coming out to get on the tour bus, there she was and she looks up and sees me and comes over and almost hugs me and says funny seeing you here too. She was so friendly and when I got back to class the following weeks, she again never looked at me or said Hi.  This was quite a good thought for a psychologist. He or she would say, this woman just wanted to show off to her friends and family she met someone from home out there who was her friend.  Silly lady.

Another lady there called and reported a professor for something he said in class she did not like. When she called, she gave her name as my name. I was not in that particular class but I knew her. I got called into the dean’s office like I was a college age kid and confronted with this. I was stunned and said I never had been in there to hear the so called comment. I had a suspicion that I knew who probably said that because she was in another class with me. They called her in right in front of me and she laughingly admitted she had said it was me.The dean did not like it at all and he made her give me a written apology.

It is mean to do this to anyone, young person or older person. It is very ugly and childish.

Perhaps, she wanted to dim my light because it was shining in her eyes and she saw I was the better and more decent person than she was. She gained nothing from this except the disdain of the faculty. Word got around she had pulled this and she really did not have too many friends there after the incident.

Always try to not dim someone’s light; instead help it to shine brighter by being more like them than you are normally.

Tonight is the first night of the Chanukah holiday with a menorah (candelabra that holds the 9 candles.) Each candle is a shining light that was never dimmed so many years ago, when it was thought there would not be enough oil to burn for even a night in the Temple. The oil lasted for eight nights and that is why one candle a night, then the second night two candles and the third night three candles etc. are lit. There is also a leader candle that is lit every night of the eight nights.

Chanukah never falls this early in the season; it will not happen again until seventy thousand more years.

During Chanukah so many centuries ago, our lights were not dimmed, so never let anyone dim your shining light because it got in their eyes. Maybe, their eyes will be opened up and they will not be dimmers, they will become glimmers who shine themselves.