darkness

Life in our world goes around and around each day, bringing new tragedies to our doorsteps. Our lives are brewed in darkness and steeped in sorrow. One may argue that you cannot have darkness without light, that you cannot know sadness if you have not first known goodness. These people are the same ones who constantly encourage others to solve their struggles and problems through prayer and mere focus on the good things. They skirt around the real problems in exchange for blind faith that excuses them from acting to aid others. They ignore the real truth of the darkness- if you are facing the darkness, you cant see the light. But those who know about the darkness and chose not to turn around to help their neighbor out of the darkness, they contribute to the spread of the darkness. When one is constantly inundated with darkness, that is all they know. Lois Lane of Justice League states the following-“The truest darkness is not the absence of light. It is the conviction that the light will never return….Our darkness is deep and soon to swallow all hope.” The absence of light leads to this true darkness. We become weighted down with the darkness and lose sight of hope and light. We go through our lives only seeing the negative, blocked from hope as the darkness also prevents us from having the courage to act. It takes away the very idea of hoping to change the situation we live in, leaving us to dissatisfaction, pain, violence, anxiety, depression, and suicide. In our society, we have been desensitized to the good, on our way to no longer noticing the negative and becoming trapped in an everlasting darkness of unfeeling. In this quote by Marianne Williamson, she states that “darkness is merely the absence of light and fear is merely the absence of love. If we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love”.  Let us step out from behind our excuses and love others, seeing the light and leading with kindness.