From books

Some revelations are brief as lightning: they show everything for a moment, then vanish.

Rabindranath Tagore · Păsări răzlețe · 1916 · 351 minute readpublic domain
The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.Rabindranath Tagore · Păsări răzlețe · 1916 · 35

The brighter the light, the shorter it lasts — yet what you saw stays yours.

Lightning does not shine like the sun, gradually and lastingly, but in a single discharge that reveals the whole sky and dies at once. So work certain truths about us: a sudden intuition, a moment of clarity in a crisis, a beauty glimpsed from a train. The mechanism is the contrast between intensity and duration: the stronger the light, the shorter it lasts. Its value does not vanish with it, for after the flash you know what the sky looks like, even if you remain in the dark.

Why it mattersComfort for those who had revelations they cannot keep: the moment of clarity counts even though it passes.

IntensityDuration
Lightning: the brighter the light, the shorter it lasts

Shelves

Back to the feed