It happened a few months ago while I was on one of my business trips and had to kill time at the airport in Rome. I walked into a bookstore and browsed through some books here and there, when I found myself immersed in a book of the philosopher Gabriel Marcel. I am not a philosopher, and had never heard of Marcel before, so I flipped through the pages with something of a curiosity. Soon my eyes were caught by the passage:

“To give is to expand, to expand oneself. … Wouldn’t an accurate definition of generosity be: A light whose joy is to give light, to be light?”

I paused. The words resonated in me, but at first I could not understand why. Then it dawned on me that I had already heard these same words somewhere: The joy of giving light… Who said these words to me? Ah, yes, my best friend from years ago.

We had been very close already in our childhood, and in high school we were inseparable. After school she became a nurse, and fell in love with a young man studying engineering. She gave birth to a boy, and a couple of years later found a good position at a central hospital. Soon she became a head-nurse, and whenever we met she seemed flourishing. Meanwhile, her husband started making money from a device which he had invented. Life was good for them. Despite our busy lives, I would still talk with her on the phone once or twice a week, and occasionally visit her.

Then, suddenly their happy life came to an abrupt end. While playing tennis, her husband had a terrible stroke and remained completely paralyzed. The doctors gave her no hope of recovery.

Without hesitation she resigned from her work and devoted herself completely to her husband. Her son was studying in a boarding school in another city, and could not help. She spent most of her time at home in order to be near her husband and take care of all his needs, and hardly ever went out. I suggested to her to hire a nurse and go back to her life, but she would not hear of it. Not wanting to alienate her, I did not argue, but I wondered how long it would take her to get disillusioned and go back to work.

But this never happened. She dedicated her life completely to her barely moving, bedridden husband. Gone was the good life she had previously enjoyed, and she now seemed to me a single-minded nun. Her friends who at first had tried to console her, slowly turned away from her.

Finally I decided to confront her. I asked her: “Aren’t you forgetting yourself? What about your own life? Don’t you want to find a new relationship? Don’t you think you should have some joy in life?”

She shrugged, as if my words were completely irrelevant. “But I do have joy, don’t you see?”

I stared at her. “Joy? With this half-dead husband?”

Immediately I regretted my harsh words, but she only smiled patiently. “I am the only light he has in life.”

“I am not talking about HIS joy. I am talking about YOUR joy, YOUR light!”

“It’s my joy too, to give him from my light. Light wants to illuminate, don’t you know? That’s the greatest joy the light has – to illuminate.”

I left her home sad, with a deep sense of helplessness. We did not seem to have much in common anymore. Gradually our friendship weakened. A few months later, when I moved to another city, we lost touch completely.

All that happened more than ten years ago. And now, standing in the airport bookstore with Marcel’s book in my hands, I understood what she had said to me about light and joy. I don’t know if I would approve of her radical devotion, but I understood it. After all, I too had gone through some difficult ordeals during those years, and I now had some understanding in those matters.

Back then, what did I know of darkness and light? I was so inexperienced, optimistic, full of child-like energies. Still, I ought to have stood by her side. I shouldn’t have left her.

A wave of shame and regret overcame me. I lowered my eyes and read the rest of Marcel’s words:

 “The special property of light is that it illuminates, it illuminates for others. This goes beyond the distinction between for me and for others. We might even say that this distinction does not exist for the light. If the joy of light is to be light, then it can only wish to be always more so. Light knows itself, then, as illuminating; and this knowledge is not like a sense of weakening and wasting itself, but on the contrary – it helps to increase its power. Like fire, generosity nurtures itself.”