The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, November 1st. It is the 16th of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.
Last week’s essay: On Stars
This will be short, because it is simple, and simpler things are better to leave short.
In my junior year of college, I took a theology class in which my professor—not as the core of the class, but as an important aside one day—pointed out that if you believe in the Resurrection, Jesus did not just “return” from the dead. Lazarus returned. Became alive again. Eventually, died again. Jesus wasn’t Lazarus. Jesus didn’t do that last part. No, if you believe in the Resurrection, Christ did not just return from the dead, only to die once more. He went through death. To something new. He did not come back. He went through.
This came to mind this week when I was startled, picking up food, by the sounds of “Light On,” the Maggie Rogers single from 2018. I discovered it first on a rainy night that November, driving through the Midwest, somewhere in the early days of a section of life that I wanted to be temporary, not because I didn’t like it, but because it didn’t feel sustainable. I listened to that song on repeat that night. Again, and again, with some mixture of sorrow and admiration for Rogers, knowing the story behind “Alaska” and how quickly and unprovoked fame had come upon her, and with some empathy for the titular lines—the agreement that the light would be left on for the “you” in the song, so long as the “you” left their own light on for the “I.”
It wasn’t that I had someone missing from my life that evening. It was a something. It was a stability, a security, a certainty. And there was a mixture to this, too: I was not only leaving the light on for that easier phase. I was coming home to a light I’d left on for myself, a light I’d returned to by taking the leaps I’d leapt.
But as that theology professor taught, many returns aren’t really returns. They’re not comebacks. They’re come-throughs.
We will never again be the people we were. We may return in some way to the way things were, or to traits we let lay dormant, but we will not be what we were, and the things will not be what they were. Time only moves in one direction. Sure, there are places in life where we really do return. But for the most part, it isn’t comebacks. It’s come-throughs.
We come through illness. We come through stress. We come through journeys and trials and joyous times and times of tribulation. We come through uncertainty. We come through pandemics. We come through elections. We come through, to something the same…but new.
So leave your light on, to the things you’d let return, and for the things you hope will let you return. But know it isn’t really a return. It isn’t a comeback. It’s a come-through. To something the same, and yet new.
Next week’s essay: On This Country, Which Is Bigger Than Its Government
