Blinded by the Light?
Quotable: A philosophy for telling stories — and for life.
Brief musings about storytelling each day (or as frequently as I can muster).
June 14, 2026
TODAY WE VEER into philosophy a bit, though I do aim to remain grounded in the real world of storytelling.
One evening in 1989, when I was 21 and my dreams of being a foreign correspondent were just beginning to gestate, I sat in the apartment of my then-role model and watched a very intense journalism movie called The Year of Living Dangerously. At least, I thought it was a journalism movie at first.
Turns out the film, directed by Peter Weir, was far more.
The two protagonists, Guy Hamilton (played by Mel Gibson) and Billy Kwan (played by Linda Hunt), both international journalists, are walking one night through the slums of Lombok in Indonesia. It is the mid-1960s, and the country is at the boiling point as its president fights to hold onto his wobbly power.
The two have a conversation about how (and whether) to help the unfortunate that surround them. Billy notes that $5 from Guy’s pocket could change someone’s life. Guy balks, saying that no matter what you do or give, it’s a droplet in the bucket.
Billy Kwan, the film’s conscience, doesn’t look at it that way at all. He invokes Leo Tolstoy’s views on poverty, then says:
“I support the view that you just don’t think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that’s in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light.”
Since I first heard that quote on that long-ago night, I have been a partisan of the sentiment. It’s something that has guided my life; though I haven’t always been successful at it, it is a North Star for me.
But how does it apply to storytelling?
Journalism, I’ve always felt, is an act of faith, and by extension much storytelling is as well. You put something out there in the ether and — even with modern metrics — you can only hope that it means something to someone, that it proves useful, that it is moving or difference-making or adds to the world. Most times, the faith is never confirmed. But even in a profession turned upside down in recent years, somehow for most journalists the faith endures.
Why? Because each story adds something. Each story is a chance at understanding something just a bit better. And like toothpaste from a tube, each story, once it’s out there, can never be taken back. Call it what you will. Ripples. Echoes. Impact. Each story, you hope, might add light to the sum of light. Turns out BIlly Kwan was right.
I realized pretty quickly that The Year of Living Dangerously was far more than a journalism movie. It’s a meditation on how we locate, and ultimately travel, our personal paths to being ethical and kind even when the most chaotic of circumstances are pushing us in the other direction. And this quote is at the heart of that. Whether light or anything else, sums only grow if you add to them.
And now, not Bruce Springsteen but Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
To Ponder
Do you have a quote that got stuck in your head that makes you think about storytelling in an unusual way? Drop it in the comments.
What responsibilities do we as storytellers have to add to the sum of light? Is that true for all storytelling?
If you’re interested in reading about how everyday life and unusual things shape us, check out my other Substack, Unsorted but Significant:
