Sparkle

We have always been attracted to the sparkle. And the world, while seeming to have an abundance, has portioned it out to hidden places, fleeting moments, and sacred times.  This is probably why it has kept its allure so long. Sparkle holds for us all the excitement of encountering something rare. Our reaction to it is built into our very genes.  We get an emotional charge when we see it. But what happens when this sparkle is no longer hidden, or fleeting, or sacred? 

The other night we were treated to an hours-long lightning storm on a drive home from a family event.  Lightning is something to see because it is at once terrifying and beautiful. One feels the dual need to both run and hide from it and to stand out and gaze at it.  It demands both admiration and respect.  

The sky produces humankind’s first and most abundant sparkles.  The sun is our most admired and important one. It burns violently in its place but it is how it bounces off our surroundings that truly romances us.  It shimmers on the water, it casts the alpenglow off the mountains and sets the sky into every shade of the palette when it rises and sets.

But it is the other stars that capture the essence of sparkle in our imaginations. We have looked to the stars for guides not just for travel but to make sense of our world.  We have labeled them as our heavens and have found our gods amongst them. We have stared at them for hours in hopes of seeing them shoot across the sky so we may make a wish and capture a good omen.

Sparkles can be found across nature.  Bioluminescence can be found on the surface of the darkening sea. Water crystallizes and gives us snow and ice.  The earth even crystallizes and gives us luminescent gemstones. One such gemstone has so captivated our senses and imaginations that it has become synonymous with love and fidelity to a huge portion of our planet, causing a great demand and therefore skyrocketing its value to the detriment of both the planet and to humans.

Fire is perhaps the most favored sparkle of humankind.  It warms and hypnotizes us. We don’t just sit around a fire for warmth but we stare into it.  Some become enchanted with fire at a young age. I still can’t forget my brothers’ lighting goat’s beard moss at the base of trees to see the fire wick its way rapidly to the top!  We light a candle to set the mood. We light a candle to pray. We even light our birthday cakes to make wishes.

And then we found a way to create sparkle, first from gunpowder.  Fireworks are some of the most impressive and beloved of all man-made sparkle.  They are big and colorful and unless you live very close to Disneyland, rare.  

In fact, all of our sparkle for almost all of our time on the earth has been fleeting, hidden, or sacred.  Those gemstones laid embedded tightly in streambeds, ensconced in rock. The lightning storms came when they came with little to no predictors.  Shooting stars must just be happened upon. Sunrises and sunsets, while seemingly predictable, will cast the most brilliant colors one day and remain beyond the clouds and out of view another.  Even our fire we save for our sacred times of home and hearth. Of prayer and worship. Our fireworks for grand celebrations and auspicious events.

And then we learned how to harness and control our sparkle first with oil and then with electricity. Our living spaces could be illuminated even at night.  We could light our paths. We could capture that sparkle, that allure with the flip of a switch. Electricity ushered in light that not only illuminated our spaces for ease of seeing, but it helped us create new ways of capturing the enchantment of the sparkle.  First came the TV. Our stories came to life, not just with movement and sound, but with light. Our gazes, for the first time, moved from the flame of the hearth to the TV screen.  

And then seemingly all in a day, we each carried this little screen in our pockets.  And we don’t turn this on and stare at it at the end of a long day, but we look to it on average every 12 minutes.  This particular sparkle has become ubiquitous, no longer hidden, fleeting, or sacred. It not only is no longer these things it makes other things commonplace as well.  Stop now and google a lightning storm or bioluminescence. You can even see bioluminescence at the bottom of the sea. You can see inside previously rarely viewed crystal caves in Nepal. But largely that is not what we are doing with our little screens.  We are getting our jolt, our sparkle, with every text, email, news article, picture, and video. So what is wrong with that? I think the answer is that we don’t know.  

When we look at other things that were once hidden or fleeting or sacred and now aren’t we see some problems.  Humans are smart and we have invented ways to catch more fish, hunt more efficiently, grow more food. And then we are left with overfished seas, extinct or near-extinct animals, and depleted farmland and poisoned groundwater.  Food, flowers, or living things that used to be seasonal, absent, or very hard to come by are now widely available. This has caused invasive species, cross-contamination, and irreversible harm to the environment. We have come to depend on things once hidden deep in the earth, such as oil, and are left with negative environmental impacts nearly out of our control.  But not all the things we have brought out of the darkness have had negative effects.

Science has begun to answer questions that once only held the sacred answers of the gods. As a result, many people are becoming less religious.  While we don’t yet know what a less religious society will be like, we cannot help but hope for some better outcomes such as less war, more scientific and logical thinking, and more inclusive ideals to gather around.  Science is also revealing long-hidden answers to issues around sickness and healing, access to water and shelter and alternative energy sources.

So what will become of our love affair with the sparkle now that we have access to it 24/7?  How will this non-stop bliss affect our lives? Our society? Will there be harmful effects? Will there be good?  When we finally got home through that long lightning storm, I planted myself on my front porch to watch. The power had gone out in my house.  What else could I do? I watched for a while, then I got my phone out to take a video. After a while, I got distracted on Instagram and then ordered something from Amazon.  We shall see. We shall see.