The Lamplighter
The light we see is built by the walking no one notices
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.”
—Albert Schweitzer
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This is the last in a series of posts from my summer travels. Next week … cinnamon rolls!
The Lamplighter
Just before dusk, a man in a long black cape and a top hat walks through Cathedral Island carrying a pole taller than he is. He stops at the first streetlamp, reaches up, and a small flame catches behind the glass. Then he walks to the next one and does it again.
Until that evening, the lamplighters I knew were hockey players. In my world, “lighting the lamp” means burying one in the back of the net and the red goal light starts flashing behind the glass. What I was now witnessing was the older kind, the literal kind, and it turned out to have a deeper story than a goal light.
I watched this lamplighter on my recent visit to Wrocław, Poland. Cathedral Island— Ostrów Tumski—is the oldest part of the city, a pocket of cobbled streets, churches, and bridges along the Oder River. Gas street lighting arrived in Wrocław in 1846, and today nearly a hundred historic gas lamps still light Ostrów Tumski. The system was restored in the 1990s, preserving a tradition that has disappeared almost everywhere else. Every night, someone still walks those old streets and lights the lamps by hand.
He moved quickly, yet he wasn't performing, as he worked around assembled tourists trailing his every step, working to keep up. He knew every lamp—where he was, where he was headed next—and he went from one to the next without a wasted step. Lamp, flame, next lamp. Nearly a hundred of them, every evening, in whatever weather Wrocław hands him.
There isn’t a light switch for Cathedral Island’s streetlights. The lamplighter doesn’t light the island all at once. He lights a lamp, and then the one after it, and then the one after that. By the time he reaches the far end of the island, the start of his path has been glowing for an hour.
We want all the light at once. The one talk, the one meeting, the one season that turns everything on. But it doesn’t arrive that way. Not on the island, and not for us. You light one person, and then you walk to the next one, and the glow builds behind you a lamp at a time.
We spend our time and energy chasing the goal light—the flash everyone sees the second it happens. We look right past the walking. But years later, what we’ll remember most is the walk.
The walking is the whole job.
He’ll be back tomorrow at dusk, pole in hand, starting at the first lamp. The island doesn’t glow because of one extraordinary act. It glows because someone keeps walking it, lamp to lamp, whether or not anyone stops to watch.
“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
Connecting this quote to the story. The greatest reward isn’t the flash or recognition, but the chance to keep showing up and doing meaningful work that brings light to others.
This week’s Chasing Influence tip: The work no one sees creates the results everyone feels.