The Network

When electricity first came to the neighborhood where I was growing up as a child, our house was one of the first to be wired. 

For thousands of years before then, the main sources of light at night were cotton wicks soaked in mustard oil and placed in small ceramic dishes. Kerosene lanterns were also there, but they were still scarce. And now there was electricity. 

One of my favorite “show and tell” routines was to ask friends to face away from me, and I would stand on a chair and push the light switch on and off. My friends would stand in awe, mouths wide open, to see the room light up and then go dark again. After a few minutes, they would catch on to what I was doing and then insist on climbing the chair and performing the magic themselves.

When a lightbulb is lit, it is no longer merely a bulb. It becomes the light. A switch and wires are not just parts of the vast electrical network. They are the network. Similarly, during those magical moments, my friends and I were not merely “experiencing” something special. We became magicians. No, even more than that—we became part of the network, part of the magic itself.   

My act lasted only a short time, because soon everyone knew the secret, and the show was over. And, as happens with childhood toys, that experience was soon lost and forgotten. Many years later, it took some major life crises and some wise teachers and mentors for me to discover what that short-lived and seemingly insignificant childhood experience had actually taught me.

I came to the realization that, just like all those little light bulbs were connected to the source of electricity, everything in my universe was also connected. We children did not know the theory of electricity or why the bulb reacted to the touch of the switch, but we knew it worked. We knew that a person’s size, sex, race, religion, or wealth did not make any difference; anyone could become a magician by becoming one with the network.

So, even in the darkest of dark moments of my life, I have known that the solution was only a matter of finding the switch.