On Darkness

For many months this year, I was lost in a dark place.

I mean darkness, in the sense of having little hope. Of having little to believe in. Everything seemed so hard, and in those moments it was. It was difficult to see how things could ever change. It was always just the same, and the same was darkness. A long night, and even the daytime was a place without light.

I understand when people say they see no way out. When they feel trapped. Most of it was the loneliness of lockdown, the condition of being isolated. It messes with your head, when you can't refer to other people in the present. When you don’t have their feedback: a shared laugh, a shared smile, even a shared tear. When you bear it all alone.

I won’t know the reason for these hard times. I’m not sure that there is one. I don’t believe that going through difficult times is necessary in order to appreciate the good ones. I don’t think that is always necessary to find meaning in suffering. But I do know that today I was walking in the dark by the sea, and instead of feeling longing, I felt contentment.

Things did change. Chance encounters with old friends, new opportunities. Sometimes it is up to us to find them, and sometimes it is for us to be patient, to bear what seems like an intractable period of waiting. Not because of righteousness, not because of anything. Because that’s the way it is. I wish there was a more eloquent way to say that. It makes me want to scream remembering just how desperate I felt to have someone I could tell everything to, someone who could understand. And while I count my blessings for all the people I love, who would listen to me and I to them, fear can make us silent. Fear can trap us in a dark place, when little do we know, people are banging on the walls to remind us that there is a key. A key that opens the door to believing in tomorrow. But ultimately, it is a key that only we can use.

Maybe I’ve told you this story before: there was once a bee in my apartment. It was buzzing frantically as it kept bumping into the glass window. I could feel its fear. But maybe a foot away was an open window. The bee could only feel how it was trapped, not how close it was to being free. When it finally found the window, I am sure I was just as relieved as it was.

As much as I’m sure that things have changed, that things have improved, I am sure that times will be difficult again. It is the nature of this life that none of us asked for, but yet here we are. One day we just arrived, and one day we will be gone. Even to remember this fact does not dictate that everyday will be sunshine. The duality in life mandates us to days of light and days of darkness. But remember there is light. Even when you don’t feel its warmth, it is there, and one day you will. And one day, in the darkness of night, you will feel the light, not from the moon or from the stars, but from you. From your heart.

And when you find it, be sure to send it along. Behind every smile there have been tears, desperately longing for someone to see them.

love,

greer