No matter what has been or will be, my inner light can’t be extinguished.

Old boilers keep a pilot light burning, a small blue flame that does no heating whatsoever. Its only job is to still be there on the day the heat gets called for.

That's a fair picture of the thing being described. Not brightness. Not optimism. Something much smaller and much harder to put out: the part of you that got up today anyway, that still notices a good song, that flinches at cruelty. Whole seasons can pass in which nothing feels warm. The flame is not a measure of how you feel. It's what stays lit underneath the feeling, waiting to be asked for.