floodlight or footlight?

Society can do weird things to your aspirations. Our list of popular platitudes pretty much says it all. Look Out for Number One. Go Big or Go Home. Climb the Ladder. Winning is Everything. It's enough to make you believe that you're lost in the shadows if you're not in the spotlight. And nothing could be further from the truth.

You want to serve as a guidepost? There are two ways to do it. One is to become the floodlight. Big, dazzling, flashy, and visible for miles. People look up to you. You use your brightness to illuminate darkness and lead the way. And everyone knows exactly where you are, precisely what you're doing at any given time.

Lots of us want to be floodlights. All that attention can make you feel pretty important. Trouble is, if everybody were a floodlight the world would be -- ironically -- a pretty blinding place.

But think of the last time you were in a movie theater. Ever try to find your seat without footlights? You probably had to ponder that for a second. After all, when footlights are doing their job we hardly even notice them. But they weren't designed to be flashy or ostentatious. They're meant to illuminate quietly. They point to a safe and certain path. And gently, very subtly, they guide us in the proper direction -- even when we didn't realize we were headed off course.

Turn off a floodlight, the path becomes unclear. Turn off the footlights, the very same thing happens. It's hard to say whether one is more important than the other. They were simply created to shine in different ways.