What Makes Us Glow?

…an equinoctial meditation on different kinds of light.

Photo Cliff Scholz

From what I’m finding online, daylight fluorescent pigments, also commonly called ‘neon’ and simply ‘fluorescent’ colors, were first marketed by the DayGlo Color Corp and trademarked as “DayGlo” brand colors. Looking into it recently, seems these bright fluorescent colors were a big trend in clothing fashions in 2024. Surprisingly, I also found a reference that quoted Time magazine as saying basically the same thing back in 1951.

But it goes even further back than that. According to a history of daylight fluorescent pigments I found in an online article from the American Chemical Society, these colors have been around since the 1930s, and were originally developed by the Switzer Brothers, Bob and Joseph, who founded the company that became DayGlo.

I’d long been curious about what makes these colors so intensely bright. If you look it up, the common scientific explanation is that the pigments absorb invisible light in the ultraviolet or “black light” range and re-emit that light in the form of color wavelengths in the visible spectrum — light we can see. Ultraviolet is a higher-energy form of light. Of course, black light, or ultraviolet light, is present in sunlight. So in effect, the idea is, daylight fluorescent pigments get a boost in their visible color intensity from an invisible form of high-energy light.

Which has me wondering: Can people do something similar? Can we take higher forms of invisible energy and re-emit it in visible ways? I suspect we can.

Which leads to another question: How many forms of invisible, high-energy light are there? Is love a high-energy form of light? It certainly gives people a certain glow. And for the person in love, the world itself often starts to glow. So, if the analogy holds, this is because when we are in love, we emit a high-energy form of invisible light that is in turn re-emitted by our surroundings. It is then visible. We literally see things we otherwise might not see without the invisible illumination of our love. And I mean, actual colors seem brighter. Everything seems brighter, when you’re in love. And all kinds of things can become visible, things we might not have noticed before. Can other people see these things? Sure — although, they may have to bring their own light to the situation. But isn’t that always how it works? The idea I’m sharing here is that maybe we live in a DayGlo™ world, and love is the invisible light that makes it shine more intensely.

Then again, what about learning? Is learning an invisible form of light, something like ultraviolet? When I learn something, I certainly feel a bit more enlightened. Learning sometimes hits the pigments in my brain in ways that can feel decidedly illuminating. When I did some reading on the history and science of daylight fluorescent pigments, I learned something. That learning then lit me up enough to motivate this writing. So am I now, as write this, re-emitting the invisible, high-energy light of learning in a form that helps make it show up a little better, like DayGlo™ paints do for signs? I’d like to think so.

As I feel into it, it really seems to me like we carry layers of being within ourselves that absorb light from various parts of various energy spectrums and re-emit that light, often in different parts of different energy spectrums. The science of the glowing colors and associated polymers of daylight fluorescent pigments, paints and so on almost undoubtedly has biological analogs. I think our cells respond to all this. We are alive in our capacity to absorb, translate, and re-emit light.

And, these forms of light or energy can and do bounce around in the conversion process. For example, if I learn something painful is going on with a friend, that’s learning, which I already identified as a form of invisible light. However, in that situation, I may re-emit the light of learning as the light of kindness. Kindness is probably best understood as yet another form of invisible light. Then as we carry and shine kindness into our environments, the effects often become visible. People turn toward kindness like plants turn toward a sunny window. Often, people will visibly brighten when treated with kindness.

Same thing with gratitude. Just last weekend while shopping, I expressed thanks for the sales help I received in finding the correct windshield wipers for my car at the car parts store, and in guiding me to a fast checkout process at another place where I bought some tools and hardware for a kitchen tiling project. I thanked these people. And this may be important to note: I really was grateful. I was hungry and tired, and I wanted to get home, is part of it. So I expressed from a place of authentic gratitude. There are perfunctory expressions of thanks, and that’s better than nothing, but when expressions of gratitude come from a deeper place, they tend to land at a deeper level, too. And the people lit up. I could see it.

And yes, the visible part of that shift in energy involved changes like smiling, perhaps also subtle changes in posture as they stood a little taller — yes, that too. But on the other hand, it also seems to me that these visible shifts when they happen reflect a deeper kind of brightening, a physical, cellular, maybe even molecular reorganization of the body to transmit the glow more efficiently. And yes, from what I’ve been reading, there’s an analog to this molecular level engineered into the technology of daylight fluorescent paints.

So the deeper principle of DayGlo™ may be much broader than what you’ll read about in that helpful webpage by the American Chemical Society cited earlier. Which I do appreciate, however, appreciation being one of those invisible forms of light! But all this makes me wonder: What if our primary job in life is to navigate toward things that light us up and make us shine more brightly and truer in our colors?

In fact this essay started out after a friend of mine and I finally had lunch for the first time after emailing back and forth for the last six years. I left that conversation feeling — I don’t know how else to say it — lit up. The conversation also had a lot of warmth (another form of invisible light, not to be underestimated!) and even moments of illuminating brilliance. After he and I talked for about two hours, my next stop was a natural foods grocery store where I hoped to buy ground cinnamon from their bulk spice section. It had been an unusually warm day for March here in Michigan and I was wearing a flannel hunting shirt as I shopped. After I got the cinnamon, I decided to see if they carried a hard-to-find brand of shampoo I like.

As I walked down the personal care product aisle, a woman walking by said, “I love your colors!”

“Thank you!” I replied.

I figured she was referring to my shirt.

Then I thought, huh…“MY colors?”

Because, I honestly don’t think this person passing by was just noticing the colors on a 4-year-old flannel that frankly has been through the wash more than a few times. Partly that, yes. But, had I not been feeling as bright and expansive and radiant as I was then, I doubt this stranger would have seen “my colors” in the same way. My hypothesis is that the light I was carrying may have helped my shirt colors to show up brighter, and also probably made it more likely that I registered as open to receive more invisible light in the form of a compliment. Whatever it was, the onlooker also seemed to brighten a bit, and she certainly brought her own light to that very brief encounter.

Ever since that afternoon, various kinds of light connected with all this have been reflecting and refracting within me, leading to further learning, thought, feeling, exploration, sharing and insight. Any of these things can light us up and more deeply illuminate our experience. And as I said earlier, I hope it’s being re-emitted right this moment in this very essay.

Can you catch this form of light? Do you feel the glow?