I am writing this post on December 21st, the first day of winter. Yet, here in the south it’s been close to 70° all day long and there’s a slight breeze in the air. It feels great. After returning home from a Christmas party, it was dark. There was one neighbor with a light on outside of their front door but with all of the surrounding trees, it still manages to make for quite a spooky scene on the outside, and yet I decided to take out the trash. I couldn’t resist the balmy weather with its breeze or the quiet darkness with it’s mysterious lure. I wish I could have stayed outdoors a little longer but I knew I needed to get back in to tend to my nighttime duties and get out of the dark. However, as I was walking back down the hill something occurred to me. A thought entered my mind. It was a thought about darkness and light and how we use the two in order to describe realities in a positive and negative sense.
We view darkness as the opposite of everything good. It is also deemed scary and unsafe. As children there is almost an innate sense of fear that manages to emerge from within us as we automatically imagine monsters under our beds. In the religious sense, darkness is the opposite of truth, happiness, and enlightenment. In staying true to those analogies, most people can testify about having been in a period of “darkness” both literally and figuratively at some point in life. On the contrary, light is seen as all things good. As stated above, it is seen as truth, happiness, and enlightenment. Light provides vision, especially when we need to find our way both literally and figuratively. I would like to hope that we could all testify to having light in our lives. Thankfully, I can say that I have that testimony…
However, while in the dark, I found that I was comfortable… Outside, in the dark, on this breezy and balmy night, I was comfortable.
But why?
I no doubt felt a bit unsafe and even a little scared. I barely had any light to guide my way up the hill. Nevertheless, I was comfortable. It simply felt good and I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want to go back in to tend to my household duties. I would rather much have preferred to stay outside in the darkness. Yet contrary to my feelings however, was the lesson floating around in my head which we’ve all learned that teaches us darkness is bad and light is good.
And yet, in spite of this lesson, it seems that when life gets hard or we’re tired or feeling sick, the one thing that most of us all want to do is simply curl up and…
TURN. OUT. THE. LIGHT.
The truth is that there is something about the darkness which has the ability to lure us into it. Even when it seems dangerous, even when we can’t see, even when we know it’s a breeding place for lies and deception.
Still, why does darkness have this strange and mysterious ability to lure us into it?
I say, because it’s comfortable!
We all love to be comfortable! It’s cozy. It feels good to our senses. When we are comfortable, we can fool ourselves into thinking that we’re safe, even when we’re not. Also, when darkness engulfs us, it hides everything around us because it doesn’t allow us to see. If we tell the truth about the way that some of us handle problems in life, we might admit that we sometimes try to hide our problems in the dark. We attempt to place them in the dark through lies, deception, and denial where they cannot be seen in hopes that we will never have to deal with them and as long as we are successful in using darkness in this way to our imagined benefit, it can allow us to become comfortable.
Becoming too comfortable is the REAL monster under our beds when the light has gone out and the darkness surrounds us because becoming too comfortable can be dangerous! Comfort can lead to complacency in high doses. How many of us have become complacent in dark situations?
To add to this perspective, contrary to what we’ve learned about light and the happiness, enlightenment, and truth that it represents, we all know that when you’ve been in the dark for so long and you’ve become comfortable, when light finally begins to shine, it hurts the eyes. Light can hurt the eyes so much in fact, that one must be careful not to look straight into it and even shield the eyes in order to adapt and focus on its brightness. Admit it! We’ve all thrown the covers back over our heads and shielded ourselves from the morning light at one time or another. So despite what we’ve been taught, light and darkness can represent something very different to us at different points within our lives.
Darkness can represent all things bad, but it also welcomes us when we face difficulties in life that we have trouble facing and we can’t stand the light.
Likewise, light can represent all things good, but it can also hurt once it begins to shine and we aren’t ready to adapt to the change and face the situations in our lives head on with effort, determination, and truth because that would be UNcomfortable.
As we are face a new year; the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, we should ask ourselves, what is it that we might be allowing ourselves to get comfortable about in the dark that needs to be dealt with and brought to the light? Even if we know that by doing so, the light of the truth and the unveiled reality may cause our physical and spiritual eyes to sting a little?
Let’s pull down the sheets and pull back the curtains. Let’s focus, adapt, and adjust and deal with what lies in front of us.
Don’t let the real monster under your bed hold you back from the light.
A.L. Hearn