We Need Darkness To See More Clearly
Imagine a situation like this: you walk through a very bright place and someone approaches you. You don’t see his face well enough to recognize them because the brightness blinds you. Maybe you raise your hand to cover your eyes and create a shadow. You needed a moment of darkness.
And at that moment, you recognize that other person, and you can tell if he’s a friend or just a stranger asking for directions. Once you realize who the person is, you can decide to either greet him or her with a hug or just kindly assist in giving direction.
Seeing better makes us choose wiser
Imagine a world with only light. If you have never experienced darkness, how could you understand and appreciate light? The contrast between light and darkness leads to deeper knowledge. We live in a world of opposites: up and down, hot and cold, good and evil.
Pain makes us appreciate joy more. World chaos increases our appreciation for peace. The anger we see can deepen our understanding of love. For this reason, the difficulties of life can be particularly effective ways of creating vital self-awareness.
The more nuances we know, the wiser we can choose. So darkness is an opportunity to reflect. Instead of seeing the outside, it makes us look inside. Life is a journey that goes from getting to the heart.
The difficulties of our lives make this journey easier to open our hearts and in that way we know and appreciate the difficulties better. In short, darkness allows us to get to know ourselves and be consistent with what we find within us.
The story of music
Imagine coming from a place where the most beautiful music ever made is played. It’s captivating, awesome music. You’ve heard it all your life. Music has never been off and you have never heard anything else in your entire life.
One day you realize that even though you’ve always heard it, you’ve never really listened to it. So you never appreciated it because you took it for granted. You had never heard of anything else. So one day you decide you want to be able to rate this music.
You decide to implement it in a challenging way to achieve a greater reward. You’ll find out that you can get a very deep idea of it if you go to a place where the music wasn’t played and then try to recreate it there.
You would only do so when the echo of that sound is attenuated. Remembering and recreating the wonderful symphony of your home would give birth to the most complete knowledge of its grandeur.
You’re going to a new place. You listen to new music. Some of the songs are awesome, but the dissonances of some are hurting your ears. These unpleasant tones promote your inner desire and ultimately bring a solution: the creation of original music. We need darkness for creative work.
Realization
Soon you will start writing your own compositions. At first, the boisterous music of this new place will bother you. Over time, however, as you move away from external sounds and listen to the tunes of your heart, your musical creations will become more beautiful.
Finally, you compose a masterpiece. When you decide to compose it, you remember something: the masterpiece you write is the same music that was played in your home. And this memory triggers another: you are that music. It’s not something you hear outside of you; music is you and you are music.
By “creating” yourself in a new place, you will get to know yourself in a way that would not have been possible if you had not stepped out of your comfort zone. You know that if you hadn’t experienced that darkness, that complete novelty, you wouldn’t have been able to really appreciate the awesome music around you.
The difficulties of life exist so that we can see what we are not like before we remember what we really are. One could say that we study conflicting sounds and moments of darkness before recreating the symphonies of our home. We need darkness to see better. We need darkness to be able to choose the direction better and really appreciate the light.
