The Quiet Thief of Our Light

There is a kind of life we live without even noticing, a slow leaking of ourselves into the cracks of the world. It doesn’t happen with a grand catastrophe or a clear betrayal. No, the real danger slips in quietly, like a draft through an old farmhouse window—barely felt until you wake one morning shivering.

Most people don’t realize that their energy, their inner flame, is a finite thing. We live as though the well inside us refills itself endlessly, even as we draw bucket after bucket to feed everyone else’s hunger. We give away our mornings, our sleep, our attention, our passions—handing out pieces of ourselves the way some people hand out hard candies from the bottom of their purse. Here, take another. I’ll get more somewhere.

But there is always a reckoning.

I’ve sat at the kitchen tables of people who are hollowed out in this way—eyes dimmed, voices brittle. They tell me they can’t sleep anymore, or their heart won’t stop racing, or their body aches in ways that no doctor can name. They talk about exhaustion as if it were a weather system they have to wait out. But exhaustion isn’t weather; it’s warning.

If we spend our days giving more than we restore, something in us begins to fray. Sometimes it begins with small things: forgetting words, snapping at someone you love, feeling the weight of fatigue even after resting. Other times it mutates into something harsher—ulcers, migraines, imbalanced hormones, weakened immunity. The body keeps score even when we’ve long stopped paying attention.

There is an old truth, older than any scripture, older than the stories your grandmother told:

What we do not protect, we lose.

The world will always ask for more. More hours, more patience, more sacrifice, more bending of your spine so others can stand straighter. And if you let it, the world will take until you’re nothing but a quiet echo of the person you meant to become.

Once, I met a woman who confessed that she hadn’t felt her own joy in years. Not because life was cruel, but because she had scattered herself across a thousand obligations—working overtime, fixing everyone else’s crises, saying yes when every part of her wanted to say no. She told me she felt as if she was living with a dimmer switch in her chest, turned down so low she had forgotten what bright felt like.

I nodded, because I understood. There was a time when I too handed out my energy like spare change. And I fell ill for it—my body collapsing under the weight of all the things I refused to let go of. Illness is often the body’s last-ditch attempt to call us home.

If we were taught differently as children—if someone had pulled us aside and said, “Your strength is precious, your attention is sacred, your inner spark is not for bargain prices”—perhaps we would have grown up guarding our vitality with more reverence.

But there is still time.

There is time to notice the places where you are leaking yourself away—conversations that drain instead of nourish, obligations that leave you wilted, habits that siphon off your spark. There is time to stop letting people, screens, worries, and relentless busyness feed on your life.

There is time to live as if your energy were a living thing that depends on you—not a machine battery, but a small, sacred animal you must tend to with tenderness.

Protect your mornings.

Protect your sleep.

Protect the joy that makes your eyes widen.

Protect the breath you forget to take when you rush from one demand to the next.

And most importantly, protect the inner light that flickers when you ignore your own needs for too long.

Conservation is not selfishness. It is stewardship.

The truth is this:

When we tend to our inner reserves, we don’t become smaller or more reserved. We become clearer, steadier, brighter. Our love grows more generous, not less. Our health roots itself more deeply. Our purpose stops scattering like seeds in a storm.

Keep your light.

Guard it like the treasure it is.

Because the world needs people who shine from a place of fullness—not people burning themselves to ash just to keep others warm.

Hari Om Tat Sat