One book that left a lasting impact on me is The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton—a true story, a reflection of his life, his journey as an innocent man who spent nearly thirty years on death row in Alabama, accused of a crime he never committed, convicted because of the colour of his skin.

His prison cell was only metres from the execution chamber, where countless men he had come to know took their final breaths.

Through it all, he held onto hope. He started a book club. He spent long days daydreaming, praying. He kept faith alive.

And when he was finally released, when he could finally lift his face to the sky, he said:

"The sun does shine."

That book—his words, his story, his strength—has stayed with me.

And on days when I have struggled to breathe deeply, when I have found it hard to get out of bed, I have whispered to myself:

The sun does shine.

Because there is an entire world in that truth.

The sun is always there, even when we cannot see it.

Literally. Figuratively.

I have always loved the way light finds its way in.

Through windows. Silhouetted behind blinds. Reflected in water.

I am reminded of when G.K Chesterton wrote that there are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

The way, in nature or in a home, textures and surfaces become a canvas for the light. It mesmerises me. Holds me. Comforts me.

I seek it.

Some days, it pours in like waterfalls—rainbows refracted through louvre windows, dancing in the ripples of a pool or across the waves of the ocean.

Other days, it hides behind the rain, but still, you can find it. In the droplets clinging to leaves, in the way they catch and hold onto the glow.

Even in the night, I find light in the fire.

The flames flicker in hues of warmth. There is light within the light.

Another book that has stayed with me is All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

It tells the story of a young girl in Paris, blind, raised by her father—a man who works at a museum and builds miniature clay replicas of the city so she can trace her fingers along the streets, learn them by heart, and always find her way home.

When war breaks out, they are separated.

She must navigate a world she cannot see, relying on her other senses, searching for her way.

The story alternates between her and a young boy in Germany, recruited into Hitler’s youth.

As you read, you wonder—will they find each other? And how?

It is a story about all the ways people try to be good to one another.

About all the ways—tangibly and intangibly—we seek and provide light for each other.

One passage in particular has always stayed with me:

"People walk the paths of the gardens below, and the wind sings anthems in the hedges, and the big old cedars at the entrance to the maze creak.

She imagines the electromagnetic waves traveling into and out of Paris. Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of television programs, of e-mails. Vast networks of fibre and wire interlaced above and beneath the city—passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them.

Commercials. ‘I am going to be late.’ ‘Maybe we should get reservations?’ ‘Pick up avocados.’ ‘What did he say?’ And ten thousand ‘I miss yous.’ Fifty thousand ‘I love yous.’

Junk mail. Appointment reminders. Market updates. Flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark—over the scarred and ever-shifting landscape we call nations.

And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That they might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about—faded, but audible, if you listen closely enough?

They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side—the air a library, a record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted, still reverberating within it. Still here.