“The power of focusing can be seen in light. Diffused light has little power or impact, but you can concentrate its energy by focusing it. With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be focused to set grass or paper on fire. When light is focused even more as a laser beam, it can cut through steel.”
This passage stopped me in my tracks when I recently revisited “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book gifted to me by a professor 18 years ago when I was a sophomore. Like light itself, ideas from our past can lie dormant and diffused in our minds until the right moment brings them into sharp focus.
What struck me most was the hidden trajectory of influence this passage had traced through my life. After transitioning from computer science into optics, I had developed what I believed were profound personal insights. I found myself applying principles of focus and concentration to everything—from managing my time to making major life decisions. These revelations felt like hard-won wisdom from my technical training, discoveries I’d earned through studying lenses and light behavior. I took pride in these philosophical applications of optical principles, seeing them as creative bridges between my professional knowledge and personal growth.
Then I opened this forgotten book.
There they were—my “original” insights—printed on a page I’d read nearly two decades ago as a computer science student. I had absorbed these words, forgotten the book entirely, and then unconsciously reconstructed them as my own revelations years later. The metaphor had lodged itself in my mind like a dormant seed, lying in wait through my entire career change, only to bloom disguised as my own wisdom.
This discovery was both humbling and awe-inspiring. Without my conscious awareness, these ideas had become part of my mental framework, emerging precisely when I needed them most. They had transformed from forgotten words on a page into guiding principles that shaped my approach to life—all while I remained oblivious to their true origin.
This experience illuminates a profound truth about how we become who we are. Our character isn’t just shaped by dramatic moments or conscious decisions—it’s the quiet accumulation of every book we’ve absorbed, every journey we’ve undertaken, and every meaningful connection we’ve made. These influences work like light through a lens, gradually focusing and refining our perspective until we see the world—and ourselves—with startling clarity.