Even the Sun’s light can take thousands of years to actually exit the sun.
The wording is not how light from our sun works… Unless you’re simplifying greatly. It’s not in a maze or some container that takes thousands of years to escape. The light is based on photons that are emitted via nuclear fusion then some mass being converted to energy/photons.
I’ve read that photons can bounce around (i.e. be absorbed and re-emitted) an estimated 40,000 years… but we all should understand that is a) an estimate and b) an estimate for the inner-most photons. Photons created via near-surface level areas of the sun may be emitted outward from the sun near-instantaneously.
All this to say that the light/photon(s) don’t/doesn’t start out as light. However, once a photon exists, it may be trapped for thousands of years due to the shear amount of mass trapping it and needing to be absorbed/re-emitted until space-bound!
An anecdote in agreement:
The CEO of my company left in September 2025. For years leading up to that, there were 3-4 layoffs/riffs of approx. 5% reductions (edit: yearly reductions). Never hired more US employees except for VP and C-level until we became very top-heavy. What jobs they do replace are primarily India and some in Argentina, many are contractors. They “cook the books” by avoiding taxes and “creatively” avoiding reporting gains/losses due to having a large amount of contractors. 2025 ended up losing a ton of customers due to churn (i.e. leaving or not renewing contracts). Most of our customera are US or North America-based and the contractor teams have such high turnover that customers are sick of us not supporting them well anymore.
Know where that former CEO is now? An AI startup.