The Absence of Light

The absence of light

There is no darkness, only the absence of light. You cannot measure the dark; it is a measure of illumination, or in some cases, a lack of it. This point stands in both a physical and metaphorical state. Imagine a pitch-black room, if I were to ask you “what do you see?” would you say “the dark”? How can you see darkness? You can’t. You notice that there is an absence of light. In the same way, when we judge someone to be, in essence, evil, that is just how we perceive it. What we are doing, is noticing that lack of affection in someone. We quickly become aware to the fact that there is no light within them, such people seem to suck all joy and happiness out of our world. Just like closing your eyes and being able to see no light.

When we come out of the darkness of sleep and open our eyes to the brightness of day, it may take a while to get accustomed, but eventually we learn to love it. That’s us, that’s who we are. We function in the light and that is how we go about every day.

Just look in the dictionary, dark doesn’t even have its own definition; it’s only ever a comparison “with little or no light”. Why is that? Is that how we, as humans, judge things? When we meet a person, we immediately and often unconsciously assess him or her on their warmth, their personality, their inner light, this little spark within us all. We may choose to embrace and nurture and encourage it. Helping it grow, just as we would our own child, to reach its highest potential and strive for the greater good.

Parents aim to pass their light onto their children. Like the Buddhists say “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of that candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”. If all parents were to adopt this attitude, all proceeding generations would be just as kind as the last; only ever getting better as each grandparent passes. Parents can literally pass on their light.

Whereas we obviously admire and gravitate to people who are kind, we feel and act contemptuously toward the cold and dark hearted. For us fickle humans, we see that darkness as the unknown, a scary place that we want to leave and return to the warmth of companionship as soon as possible. It is seen as a new experience of which is not yet encountered, and that scares us.

Nobody ever wants to be the first, to be confident enough to put yourself forward for an unforeseen danger. We like to have everything planned out for us in advance, calculating each and every risk and contemplating the worst-case scenario, in this way we prepare ourselves for all possible outcomes, like taking a torch with us into the dark.

Something that may seem harmless in the light of day, like a small winding road on the way home, becomes an unnerving trek to certain death in the shadows. When I was young the gloomy corner of my room at night terrified me and admittedly the sunless world still gives me chills. But why are there more children scared of the dark than adults? Is it just that as you grow up you don’t admit to it anymore or is there something fundamentally different?

Children don’t have enough light of their own to out-shine what is seen as evil. The lesson on right and wrong is still in its experimental stage until the true meaning of light and kindness is learnt. But until we try it out for ourselves, we will never know, only being left in the dark. As juveniles, that fear of the unknown is amplified to an unreal scale. Imagining monsters under the bed and beasts lurking around the room, all because we can’t see what’s there and have to conjure something up. As one gets older, imagination loses its fantasy and creativity, slowly becoming common sense and logical reasoning. Then can we see that there is nothing there to hurt us, only what we see as the dark.

What most people don’t understand is that there is no such thing. There cannot be cold, it is just a word we humans have made up for the lack of warmth, as it is with the dark and therefore evil.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars… and only in a world of spite do we see humanity.

Thank you.