Light and Darkness

A friend of mine remarked recently that she was feeling much better. She had felt plunged into darkness for a time, and then it was like someone had turned the lights back on a couple of weeks ago and she felt much better about life. I asker her who turned the lights on and suggested it might have been her. We chatted some more about what accounts for differences in how one feels about their progress in life and whether there are gender differences in how we perceive the purpose of living etc. But the idea of living in the light vs. living in the darkness stuck with me. It reminded me of a metaphor someone once mentioned to me—the question was if the earth stopped turning, where would you want to live—on the side that was perpetually dark or the side in the light? It led me to asking myself whether I preferred morning light or late afternoon, whether gravity would cease or overwhelm us, etc., etc. It ruined the metaphor for the person speaking as it was intended to somehow make a point about caring for the environment. My point was the whole thing is impossible.

Anyway, where does that leave me on the subject of light and darkness? I guess in the same place. Light and darkness are yin and yang. One does not exist without the other. It is just as silly to deny the existence of light when we are experiencing a dark period, as it is to pretend when everything is light and happy that we won't ever have any darkness to face. Life if made up of both, as my friend later remarked-beauty is found in the interplay of light and darkness, the contrast, the shading, the combinations that seem endless. I will try to remember that the next time I'm in a dark mood.