Downtown lights

I was in my office working late a few Thursday nights ago. Since cancer I’ve tried to avoid working late. I watched the sun set behind the harbour bridge. Then I enjoyed the transformation of the city into a mass of twinkling lights.

I’ve always liked city lights. I grew up in a house on top of a hill with a vast urban view which was especially magical at night.

During different periods of my life, city lights have given me comfort. When I first got to London in the mid 90s I was sad, lonely and homesick. After work I used to walk to the middle of London Bridge to stop and look at the lights and the view. From London Bridge you can see Tower Bridge, Big Ben, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tate Modern. The view was both familiar and alien. The same twinkling urban lights, but a new, exciting, scary and unfamiliar city. A city that felt like the living, breathing centre of the world.

The bright lights of the big city have also been used by poets and songwriters to portray loneliness and separation. The lights offer a glimmer of hope, a promise of connection in an urban sprawl. Sometimes the glow can be cold, harsh and indifferent - a reminder that you can be alone even when you are surrounded by people. Here I shall briefly mention the song The Downtown Lights, by Blue Nile. I love this song (and I also love the Annie Lennox cover version). It is a beautiful soulful song about loneliness. The mood is of longing and disillusionment, empty streets and empty bars, awash in cigarette smoke and flickering streetlights. It describes how I felt when I first got to London perfectly.

When I was sick I liked to go for walks up into the Waitakere Ranges in the early evening so during the walk home I could watch the lights turn on until there was a shiny carpet below me. I felt separated from humanity when I was sick. I liked to imagine the people in their light filled homes living their lives free of the things I was dealing with - and that one day I’d be one of them again.

And here I am, one of them again.

What I have come to realise is that we all at some point have trauma, sadness, grief and loneliness that we must navigate.

I seem to be at an age where people take stock of their lives. It took a life changing illness for me to re-evaluate my priorities and spend more time at home with my husband, daughter and pets. For some of my friends this life stage has meant they have become single in their 50s.

I’ve watched people I love walk away from something that used to define them. Not because they stopped believing in love — but because they had lost themselves and they were unhappy. It’s not easy. Of course it isn’t. You don’t spend 20 or 30 years building a life with someone and then simply move your things out one day and get on with it. There is pain. There is confusion. There’s the practical things like the house, the bank accounts, the dog, the kids and the retirement savings. There is also the dismantling of a love story that they told the world with conviction.

What I’ve learned from my friends is that being single in your fifties is not the sad sequel to the main story. It’s not a plot twist no one wanted. It’s a chapter. And with it comes something unexpected: a rediscovery of themselves.

They’re travelling alone. They’re taking up hobbies and saying yes to things they previously said no to. They’re doing things that make them happy. I look at them and admire that they did not need a life changing illness to decide to be true to themselves and seize joy.

I acknowledge my friends who are single. To the woman who left when it was easier to stay. To the man who is starting again, not from scratch, but from experience. They aren’t broken. They have not failed. They’re on their next adventure.

Self discovery doesn’t always come in the light, sometimes we have to find it in the dark.

And remember, my friends: those downtown lights return every night. One window at a time. One street at a time. Until out the darkness the whole city shines again — and so will you.