I need to write today. I need to write in a way I haven’t needed to in a long time.
I went to bed thinking about Brown University and woke up to news from Bondi Beach.
It isn’t chance or coincidence that this happened right before Hanukkah. Of course it wasn’t — One of those shootings was specifically targeting a Hanukkah celebration. But since learning about Ahmed al Ahmed, the hero of Bondi Beach, I’ve had a line from one of my favorite Hanukkah songs running through my head.
Light one candle against the darkness.
Tonight, I will light the first candle of Hanukkah. As I do, I will commit myself again to lighting candles which shine bright against the darkness of our world.
Not only literal candles, but the far more impactful figurative candles.
My brightest candles are my writing. My fiction writing, yes, which I think I have good reason to be proud of, but in someways even more my nonfiction, which I have allowed to lapse in recent years.
I’m not sure why I stopped writing the nonfic essays and Quora answers and such. Part of it was self consciousness and fear of messing up. Part of it was burnout. I can feel there were other things, even if I can’t put words to them.
But I let it go to long, let my silence in face of horror linger. It’s time to start writing again.
It’s time to start lighting again.
What Candle Will You Light?
One candle against the darkness is meaningful, but at the end of the day, it’s just one candle.
By the end of Hanukkah I will be lighting eight candles (nine if you count the shamash. It is still just eight candles. Eight little lights, burning bravely again a world that today seems endlessly dark.
But I do not light them alone.
I am only one of millions of Jews who will be lighting candles this coming week. Just as I am only one of millions — perhaps billions — of people who are fighting back against the darkness in the world every day.
Today, Ahmed al Ahmed lit one hell of a candle. He stood against the dark with nothing but his conviction and his own two hands and he drove it back.
Thankfully, few of us face moments like Ahmed did today, but we all face moments, great and small, where we are called upon to stand against the dark. To light our candles, knowing the wind can blow them out at any time, but knowing we can do no less.
What candle will you light today?