Light From a Pixel

Sometimes people ask how Light From a Pixel got its name.  Light is a metaphor we have seen countless times throughout the centuries in literature as it symbolizes things like new life or the unveiling of truth.  It is a timeless concept that applies to every generation as they seek to understand the world around them.  Light is connected with driving out darkness, with hope, with finding reason and wisdom in the midst of chaos.  It is a metaphor or symbol for the presence of God.  In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.  - John 1:4 

Like a pixel does, I strive to put light out into the world with my writing.  As I wrote the very first words of this blog, I began to see myself as a pixel shining light from a computer screen into a dark room.   I see Gen Xers as my fellow pixels - that is where the URL for this blog came from: genxpixels.blogspot.com.

 If just one pixel is shining light on a large screen, you can see it.  If a few are shining together, a ray of light can start to reach across the whole room....

As we look for answers, we look back through time at what other generations have written in order to understand the world and history through the eyes of people who have lived in other eras.  I look to my fellow Gen Xers the most to help me find light as I look for answers in the world today.  Part of this is looking back to the pop culture of our youth and the images of our collective consciousness that lit up our imaginations.  Gen X is the first digitally literate generation on the timeline and many our childhood memories are full of pixels.

Much of the essence of this blog is the spirituality that developed within me in my youth in sacred moments of experiencing the presence of God when I was barely beginning to know that even meant.  These moments are connected to visual snapshots from my childhood that float through my consciousness still...blue vintage Christmas lights strung across an icy rooftop, pictures I made with my Lite Brite, images of the first video games I ever played.  Most of all, there was the fiber optic lights I played with in my childhood before the sun would rise that were like the stained glass windows of a cathedral to me.

light in the darkness

Every time I see a picture of the earth taken from the outer atmosphere that shows the continents lit up by the stillness of city lights and the movement of cars on freeways - I think about the collective light of a generation - especially Generation X.

It seems like each generation comes together by the choices it makes to create a sort of mosaic of pixels, and when the very last person from a generation takes their last breath before dying, a sort of cosmic screen print is made of the image everyone created together.  This is what becomes the legacy of a generation. What image will Generation X leave behind for the ages?   What will we do to leave the world a better place than we found it? 

Let's look for the light, let's be the light.  We are all pixels and our light shines brighter when we shine together....

Letter to Gen X

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(c) 2014 writing and fiber optic/Lite Brite photos by Chloe Koffas -
(picture of earth available free by NASA)