We’ll leave the light on for ourselves

This morning I heard that people in Cleveland, or at least in this building, plan to leave lights on in rooms with exterior views tonight.  Why?

The playoffs, of course.

The Cavs play the Orlando Magic tonight here and the whole country will be able to see the city from those blimp shots of the arena.  So we leave lights on.  How does this help?  I guess it’s supposed to make the city look livelier.  I can’t see how it would make the city look bigger.  I doubt that anyone will be watching at home and think, “Wow!  Cleveland looks great with all those lights on!”  But I guess I don’t really know.

This whole plan is just for us.  We see iconic pictures of the New York City skyline at night, with its lights gleaming and reflecting across the water, and we want that.  We want our city to be respected, loved, and valued.  It isn’t right now.

But why pretend?  Why do we need to leave lights on to pretend that we are a big, important city?  Why don’t we turn our lights off to show how forward-thinking and environmentally conscious we are?  That would certainly get us more attention.

Our lights will be on tonight, but only for our own bruised egos.

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