We live in a world of light, mostly, as the Earth orbits the Sun and as the Earth rotates around it’s axis even as the entire solar system spirals through the Universe. When there is daylight, we see the immediate.
Once there was a time when we feared the nocturnal predators, maybe gathering around a fire somewhere thinking that would keep them at bay. As we spread across the planet, those predators became less of a problem, and it’s the rare place in the world where one has to worry about things that might eat us.
They still exist. The tigers, the wolves, the bears, and so on, but the main threat to humanity in the dark these days is humanity.
Yet some of us still look up to the sky at night, or drink our coffee before dawn in the quiet darkness that comforts the soul. There is less sound because most people are still asleep, trained by millennia of evolution to stay ‘safe’ in their caves until the sun is out, or because they were out drinking fermented fruits the night before and making their own cacophony.
In the darkness, though, with nothing to see, we can look inward and outward at the same time, less distracted by the bouncing reflections of color that make up our daylight world. The relative silence that comes with it also allows us to hear ourselves before others awake on their schedule.
At times, we can push the distractions out of our mind, plotting our way through our days. Without the cacophony of the world we can hear ourselves think, see ourselves for who we are instead of what others see.
We can hear our own thoughts without a constant ebb and flow of the cacophony.
We can confront our own darkness to see our own light.
We can feel the world around us begin to breath.
We can reflect on a world where we are our own light.
And, we get to have a nice cup of coffee undisturbed before the world begins to disturb us once more.
