Light Up Your Life

One of the great experiences of my youth was going to the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh.  Among many other things, I was fascinated by the bicycle in the main lobby they had rigged to generate electricity.  The faster you peddled the bike, the more wattage you could create and the more light bulbs you could light up.  We all competed to see who could light up the most lights for the longest time.  I’m sure I didn’t win, but I remember getting a reasonable enough number of lights glowing to give a decent account of myself!   

Many years later, I’ve settled into the notion that life is pretty much like riding a “rigged” bicycle and seeing how many lights we can light up for how long.  Most importantly: As soon as you stop peddling and pushing, the lights go out.  Darkness.  Nada!   

Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.  It’s here and it’s gone.  If the sun wasn’t pumping out megatons of energy every second, we’d be but flashes in the pan.   

But that’s how the universe works.  It takes a constant, uninterrupted stream of energy to keep the whole lot from collapsing into a black hole – or complete randomness.  Iron rusts, water runs downhill, dust balls accumulate, bread and cookies get stale, paint tarnishes, etc.  That’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  It’s the LAW!  

It applies to people and projects just as it does to the most basic elements and working systems: If we aren’t properly “rigged” and don’t keep pushing forward, the lights go out. 

The bad news is that everything eventually degenerates and decays.  The good news is that there is enough energy in the universe – if we effectively harness and apply it – to create magnificence above and beyond all that degenerates and decays!   

So it now seems the main point of an amply lived and fulfilled life is to see how much LIGHT we can generate – and keep generating for the duration.  

Imagine:

What would happen if all the FITNESS CLUBS and WELLNESS CENTERS in the universe rigged their exercise equipment with electricity-generating systems – and then the electric companies offered subsidized rates for whatever amount we generated? 

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We are all like bicycles with the potential to light up the world.  Except that we need to become equipped with the appropriate “rigging” – else we’re simply “spinning our wheels” in the dark.   

Let’s get “rigged” for great things, start turning on some lights, and put some serious wattage on the scoreboard!  Quartermaster 

“Do not go gentle into that good night, …
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas