The Phases of Light and Dark...

I used to seek only the light and avoid the dark.  And I suppose that is one way to live.  It was kind of miserable always having to search for the light and run from the darkness in life.  It was hard and exacting and futile.  I did my best but all it really did was commit me to an addicts’ trajectory.  Seek pleasure, avoid pain.

Back then it seemed like the only way to live.  I didn’t know there was another choice.  I didn’t know.  My whole life was consumed was avoiding anything hard or difficult and seeking to be happy or pleased all the time.  I am sure it never occurred to me that this was no way to live.  

Then I got sober.  And I found, through a great deal of very hard experiences, that there is safety in the darkness and it does not need to be run from anymore than pleasure needs to be run to.  I also found a great deal of unsafely in the light.  Sometimes, the light burns with all its brightness and perhaps a dimmer view might be just the thing to help you over the hump.

Today, I have learned to just let whatever is here to be here.  I do not try to change it any longer.  This doesn’t mean that sometimes I want to change it...just that I realize now that my best living comes from when I just accept what is and don’t try to make it something else.  I do not always have to find light within the darkness, or darkness within the light. Sometimes it is just ok for it to be dark, because I know the light will come again.  And similarly, when it is light, I know I will again be plagued with darkness.

Today, I do my best to just accept the light and love it for all it brings to my life.  And realize it isn’t better than darkness, it is just different.  And while I really do enjoy the light better, I have learned there is great value in darkness.  And I can remain safe and at ease even when things are their blackest.  Safety comes from within, not from the relative dimness or not of how my life is going at the moment.  If I can be safe in the light, then I can also be safe in the dark.

A full, complete life requires both.  And the way I look at it now, there exists a spiral towards the heavens that on one side lives darkness and then on the other side lives the light.  And my life is a constantly an upward ascension while moving through the light and dark.  Of course it was much wider at the bottom so it felt like the dark times would never end and the light would never come, but it always does.  Even in the worst of times, even then, there is always light to be found.

I wish that all of this knowledge and experience granted me freedom from the paralyzing fear that causes one to seek pleasure and avoid pain...but that is not a quality that I think can be achieved by most of us mortal souls.  We are hard wired for this.  I think the best use of our lives is to learn to sit still and accept each for their relative merits and stop allowing our wishes to demand something other than what is actually occurring.

My dad is dying and it has been fairly brutal.  But I do not wish it to be different.  He is 82 and has had dementia for the past 14 years.  We are lucky we got to have him as long as we did.  And it is his time to go.  I do not wish it to be different.  There is a great deal of light within this darkness and also, at the very same time, a great deal of darkness that is for sure dimming our light.  But I do not wish this to be different, I can see that my life is such a tight spiral these days that I circle through the light and dark so rapidly, it is now impossible to cling to anything.

I see the phases of light and dark.  And I acknowledge them as being exactly the way they are supposed to be.  There is nothing I need do except move forward, sober and awake for all of this.  To show up and bear witness to his life and his death.  To hold each in good regard and know that none of this is up to me.  I am here as witness, hand maiden to death which is not something I ever asked for, but have been tasked with nevertheless.  And I guess, I am honored to have been chosen for this task of ever increasing darkness and the ineffable dispensing of light.  I see the light within him, the staff, the hospice nurses, my mom, my kids and myself.  That is our role in all of this, to bring the light as his light slowly leaves us.  And because both light and dark will always be required, I need not worry about one overtaking the other, because as one empties the other fills.

Again, still...