Winter is Coming: Where are the bright lights?

If you watch Game of Thrones or the 100, your viewing consciousness is filled with ominous warnings that “winter is coming.” Such a term signals that a certain brooding darkness is coming.  Of course, those of us in places that experience the seasons fully, know this is a time when many get a bot of cabin fever and hunger for the light.  The skin wants to soak up some rays of sun and the eyes want to wince in the sun’s glare. This time last year, an unrelenting thick smog in Harbin, China led to schools, roadways, and the airport closing.  Darkness can quickly envelop us.   Because of that need to be vigilant for the darkness we should note where the light can emerge from.

Here are a few beams of light from throughout the Caribbean.

Sugar in the Caymans

A little bit of sugar crystals can surely brighten up a day.

A mural egging on activism and light in a blighted community in Puerto Rico.

Bright Cuban Car

Many may feel Cuba is depressed but its bright cars shine a strong light.

Local Art in Cuba

Cuban artists take the brightness to political atmosphere in an interesting subversive manner.

Winter is indeed coming and thus let us be vigilant to seek out the bright lights wherever we can find them. The looming darkness may remind us of our mortality that we came to recognize back when we hit our tween years but it need not be bleak and scary. Find the brightness.

little happy bright boy

And of course, a little boy riding a train car always brings brightness and light to one’s own heart.