Draft 1: Be a light.
It started with three simple words:
Be a light.
A friend texted them to me five years ago this month. I didn’t know then how much those words would follow me, or how they’d come to shape the way I see everything.
For a long time, I thought light meant doing more…shining brighter, trying harder, filling every quiet room. But over time, I began to see it differently. Light isn’t loud. It’s steady. It lives in the smallest places…in laughter around a table, in the quiet work of our hands, in the people who love and show up for us on our ordinary days.
I’ve been studying the Science of Happiness (not the self-help version that promises instant joy) but the deeper kind. The kind rooted in meaning, connection, and what actually makes a life feel full.
Through this master’s program (and all the reading, reflecting, and unlearning that’s come with it) I started noticing something that had been there all along: light. Not the kind you chase, but the kind that quietly shows up.
The light found in the living.
It’s not staged or filtered or planned. It’s the kind that flickers in the middle of dinner when everyone’s laughing at something small. The kind that shows up in the steady way someone pours coffee for the person they love. The kind that lives in stories told in passing…not for an audience, but just because they matter.
And somewhere in all of that, I realized something simple but life-changing: most of the light we carry never makes it to a stage or a screen.
It’s lived, not performed.
It’s found in families, in friendships, in quiet moments no one ever records.
It’s the kind of light that builds a life…not a spotlight.
That realization became The Light We Live.
What began as a calling (to notice and preserve that beauty) has grown into a way of honoring people while they’re here. Through film and storytelling, I’ve learned that the act of seeing someone is one of the most powerful things we can do.
We don’t have to wait for someday to tell our story.
We don’t have to wait until things are perfect or finished.
Our light is already here…in the middle of the mess and the magic.
Maybe that’s what my friend meant.
Maybe being a light isn’t about shining the brightest,
but about seeing the light in others and helping it be seen, too.
-Madison
Founder, The Light We Live
