Source Code

February 22, 2026 at 1:14 pm (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
Tags: articles on wordpress, blog, blog post, creative writing, Fandango's One Word Challenge, FOWC, inner self, introspection, lifelessons, PaletteNPixels, parables, pieces of my heart, stories, Writers on wordpress

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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge FOWC

Prompt word: Source

https://wp.me/pfZzxd-u4g

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A traveler once arrived in a village that worshipped a lamp.

It stood in the center of the square – tall, ornate, eternally lit. The villagers polished its base, guarded its glass, argued over its brightness. Some insisted it burned stronger in winter. Others claimed it flickered in the presence of doubt.

The traveler watched quietly and asked a simple question.

“Where is the flame fed from?”
The villagers laughed. “From the lamp, of course.”

But the traveler walked around it. Beneath the carved pedestal, beneath the tiles, beneath the stone, there ran a narrow line of oil, hidden and uninterrupted, flowing from a reservoir outside the village walls.

They had built rituals around the glow. They had never examined the source.

We are a civilization obsessed with lamps.

We polish outcomes, debate appearances, defend brightness, and we measure success in lumens.

But we rarely ask, what feeds it?

What is the source of your ambition?
What fuels your anger?
What powers your kindness when no one is watching?

We analyze behavior like critics at a theatre performance, yet ignore the backstage machinery. We treat symptoms like they are origins. We call reactions personality.
But nothing simply appears.

Every sharp word has a source.
Every silent withdrawal has a source.
Every extraordinary resilience has a source.
And the source is rarely what we first suspect.

Consider this, the source of confidence is not applause. It may be a childhood where someone listened, or perhaps a childhood where no one did, and strength became survival.

The source of outrage may not be injustice alone, but wounded pride.

The source of generosity may not be abundance, but a memory of lack.

We are not self-generated beings. We are reservoirs fed by unseen tributaries, like memory, influence, fear, love, culture, silence.

Who installed your beliefs?
Who sourced your fears?
When did your humor become armor?

If you trace carefully enough, you will find that most of what you call “me” has a lineage. Even light, that noble metaphor we adore, depends on source.

A bulb glows only because current moves unseen. A star burns because fusion rages in secret. A human shines because something within is alive. And here lies the mystery,  the most powerful sources are invisible.

We see the glow.
We rarely see the flow.

The source of a life well lived is not its visible milestones. It is the quiet architecture beneath them, discipline no one applauds, questions no one hears, private reckonings no one documents.

The source of peace is not the absence of chaos. It is the decision to stop sourcing your stability from unstable things.

The source of joy is not possession. It is alignment.

The source of clarity is often not more information, but less noise. The source of wisdom is not accumulation, but subtraction.
The source of love is not intensity, but presence.

And perhaps the most unsettling realization of all. You are not merely shaped by sources, you are one. You are the source of the tone in your home. The source of courage in a meeting. The source of either escalation or ease in a conflict.

You are someone else’s upstream. This is where responsibility sharpens. If bitterness flows from you, that becomes someone else’s inheritance. If grace flows from you, that too travels. We often underestimate how far our sources reach.

Yet here is the awe-filled paradox. Sometimes the source is neither wound nor willpower.
Sometimes it is something quieter – Silence, attention, stillness.

We live in an age obsessed with tracing sources of data, funds, influence, yet we hesitate to trace the sources of ourselves. Perhaps because the excavation is intimate. Perhaps because the answer might unsettle the narrative we’ve curated.

But imagine a life where before reacting, you ask, What is this sourced from? Before judging,  What is their source? Before shining, What feeds my flame?

The traveler in the village did not extinguish the lamp. He simply followed the line of oil. And that is the work. Follow the line. Trace the current. Question the reservoir.

Because in the end, brightness is easy. But if you truly wish to live deliberately, fiercely, luminously, don’t just admire the light.

Be very careful what you choose as your source.

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