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Victoria Moran encourages us to find our inner light and explains how we can impact the world by letting it shine.

13 Million Points of Light (or Maybe 3 Million, but That’s Still a Lot of Light)
From Victoria Moran, Main Street Vegan Academy, MainStreetVegan.com
October 2025

Photo from Canva

Originally printed in the Main Street Vegan blog, MainStreetVegan.com.

In his Presidential acceptance speech in 1988, George H.W. Bush used the term “a thousand points of light” to refer to volunteers. It caught on. It had been used before in literature, notably in The Magician’s Nephew, the 1955 Chronicles of Narnia prequel by C.S. Lewis: “One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leapt out—single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world.” However you wordsmith it, the phrase resonates. Who wouldn’t want to get thoroughly bedazzled by a thousand points of light? Or better still, get to be one? That pretty much encapsulates some of the greatest wisdom of human history:

• “The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord” ~ Proverbs 20:27


• “There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all. That is the radiant light that shines in the heart of man” ~ Chandogya Upanishad


• “Be a light unto yourself. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth” ~ Gautama Buddha


• “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” ~ Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 5:16


• “I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own being” ~ Hafiz, Sufi mystic

Photo from MainStreetVegan.com

Vegans don’t have a corner on the light within, but we’re blessed with extra chances for finding it, seeing it, and sharing it. At this point in time, in the U.S. anyway, we vegans are seeing a dip in our popularity, even our credibility. While 2019 was Year of the Vegan, 2025 seems to be the year of raw milk and beef tallow. Back when Bush made his thousand points of light speech, I believed that I would live to see a vegan world. I was excited, emboldened even, to know that I was part of a movement that would change everything for animals. At that same time, we were seeing preliminary findings from Dr. Dean Ornish on reversing heart disease with a low-fat, virtually vegan diet and other practices I resonated with: yoga, meditation, walking, group support. The future looked bright and the goal was clear: more people go vegan/fewer animals are raised for food/everybody wins. It seemed just that simple for more than 30 years.

Photo from MainStreetVegan.com

While I still see bringing people veganward as my purpose in life, I realize that I will not live to see a vegan world. What I can do with every day I have on earth, however, is uplift some microcosm of humanity by being a light in the darkness. Every kind act, every stretch of patience, every story listened to is an opportunity for me, for each of us, to shine our light. The specific incident may have nothing directly to do with veganism, but when a vegan shines for any reason, veganism itself gets a polish job.

I was informed the other day that seven years ago, vegetarians and vegans accounted for 2% to 3% of Americans; today, according to the Google gods, 1%. Another citation (Gallup) had us at that puny 1% back in 2023. On the other hand, a Statistica article, updated in March of this year, states “4% of the [U.S.] population follows a vegan diet.” That’s 13.2 million people and, having been raised on affirmations and The Power of Positive Thinking, I had to go with that number for this post. But even at the discouraging low end, we account for 3.4 million human beings. That’s every living soul in the city of Los Angeles. It’s metro Detroit, Seattle, or San Francisco. Even worst case scenario, we are 3.4 million people in the United States alone who are right now:

• Influencing the marketplace with our purchases


• Influencing the discourse with our words


• Changing the lives of living beings, maybe far more than we know, with our actions


• And making a real and lasting difference as points of light amidst the miasma of cognitive dissonance, ingrained tradition, false information, and unspeakable fear.

Image from MainStreetVegan.com

So, how do we shine our light? Well, first, we have to recognize that it’s there. If you don’t have a religious or spiritual understanding of “inner light,” create something that works for you and fits your worldview. Envisioning light in the region of the heart is a classic technique for remembering that our essence really is luminosity. If quantum physics tickles your fancy, David Bohm, a protege of Einstein’s, referred to matter as “frozen light.” How you see it is your business; that you shine it is everybody’s. Here are some suggestions for turning on the light:

• Be actively kind. Leave no one out. This way, when you run into someone despicable you’ll have made kindness a habit.


• Do your good work without hating the evildoers. If you fail, and I can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t, try again.


• Accept that you are an ambassador of veganism. It’s not fair. You should be able to scream at a scam caller, make a fuss over being cheated or ignored, or give some omnivore a piece of your mind. Those are options open to us all. But everything a vegan does defines veganism to someone else and that definition will ultimately impact a choice, impact an animal.


• Live your best life. That’s a doozy, since life itself (of all things) tends to interfere. You can be the personification of healthy living and get sick. You can dedicate yourself to animal rights and have the needs of a single human take you away from your commitment time and again. But once you accept that life is never easy (and twice as hard for those attempting to change the world) it’s not so bad.


• Commit to philanthropic selfishness. That means: be there for people and animals and this movement, but take care of yourself first. Otherwise, you’ll burn out or worse: give up.


• Practice the presence of the light within. The outside world attracts our attention, both when it’s evidencing awe and wonder and when it’s showing horror and depravity. Either way, it’s hard not to look. We have to counterbalance this by remembering the Truth underlying the facts. Things can look wretched and get better. People can seem unreachable and be reached. We can see ourselves as mere fragments of carbon and good intentions, or we can each see ourself as a being of light, on earth at this moment to do something no one else can do.

When we are in this state of mind and heart, people see our light and feel it. We can’t change another person with our ego or personality, but that force within us, that living light responsible for wonders and ah-hahs all over the place, can do it—as long as we’re cooperating. So, go forth embracing the mystic’s paradox: you’re human, as powerless and flaw-filled as all the rest of us, and equally true, you are an expression of the Infinite, designed to shine like crazy and destined to rearrange the universe.

Victoria Moran is writer, author, speaker, and vegan educator. Featured twice on Oprah and listed by VegNews among the “Top 10 Living Vegetarian Authors,” Victoria has written fourteen books on veganism, wellbeing, and eclectic spirituality, including The Love-Powered Diet, Main Street Vegan, and Age Like a Yogi. She hosts the Main Street Vegan Podcast and directs Main Street Vegan Academy, training and certifying vegan lifestyle coaches in live, real-time Zoom classes since 2012. Along with her husband Rev. William Melton and Rev. Sarah Bowen, both Interfaith ministers, she founded the Compassion Consortium, a spiritual center for animal advocates. Victoria was lead producer for Thomas Jackson’s documentary, A Prayer for Compassion. In 2016, she was voted Peta’s Sexiest Vegan Over 50, and she was inducted last year into the Vegan Hall of Fame.

Photo from MainStreetVegan.com

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Posted on All-Creatures: October 16, 2025
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