Day 64
Among the fears I've often battled in life--spiders, heights, public speaking--my fear of darkness is right up there with the rest of them. It's a basic fear of the unknown, I think, the often crippling belief that I'm not alone, that some creature with better night vision is watching me!
And yet the darkness is often where I feel the most peace, too, the place I feel more relaxed and mellow.
When I'm out in the sun, my eyes hurt a little more. My skin needs protection from burning. My whole body heats up, and I begin to feel depleted. But when I'm in the darkness, I'm cooler and more relaxed. My eyes feel better, and my brain does too. Nighttime, or darkness in general, is when I feel so naturally relaxed that my mind and body want to rest.
So what's the problem? Why do we fear the darkness? Maybe there's a simpler fear beyond this, another issue lurking in the dark. When the lights are out and there's nothing else to see around us, we're suddenly alone with--gasp--our thoughts! When the only thing we see is the night, we turn inward a lot more easily. We dream while we sleep more than we daydream while we're awake.
We muse on the mysteries of life more at night than we brood on the miseries of life in the light.
But when we really learn to embrace the darkness, we embrace the mystery and the silence too. We embrace that quiet time and space of reflection we cannot run from, the time when the lights are turned off, and the darkness is turned on.
That's the thing about darkness: it'll never, ever blind you, and it'll always force you to find your own way through the night.
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