There is a lot of stress in our lives and world right now. Recognizing stress comes from darkness can be empowering and provide tools to treat it. Though ‘darkness’ might seem like too simple a concept to explore without feeling like a born-again something-or-other, there is peace and healing in being able to spot it and avoid it.
We are very reliant on media for entertainment. Everything that comes to us through screens or on paper relies on ‘danger’ as a way to create story arcs and drama. There is a formula for writing a ‘good’ story and it always includes endangering the character, which is stressful, not only for the character, but for those hearing or reading or seeing the story play out. We are made to care about characters and then bear witness to their torment and torture as a way of being amused. That can take a toll. Life did not revolve this constantly around story as entertainment before now. We were out living and interacting more to offset the way we tend to become immersed in tales of others. The more things like the weather, politics, society, and celebrations even (if people there are toxic or argumentative) become full of things that cause alarm or displeasure, after working hard to afford our lives, we turn to dissociation in story to relax. And then the stories are full of stress, which does not allow relaxation. Stress grows.
If work is stress, school is stress, the world is stress, our social or familial circles are stressful, etc. and the ways we escape those are also stressful… you can see where this is going. We should see the need, at least, to course correct and identify things that make us feel good instead.
Anything that involves crime, physical harm, death, danger, depictions of evil, societal collapse, or anything in that vein are dark. Pressures we put on ourselves to be perfect or fit someone else’s standards can be dark. Being made to feel we are personally responsible to fix everyone else’s lives and choices is dark. There is darkness is hunting and eating meat. There is darkness in ways we take of our planet’s resources without using care and mindfulness. News is obviously dark, as is the way we turn ourselves into pretzel shapes to try and impress each other.
Darkness reduces. It’s a fear thing. It is careless. It is without connection to the stuff that makes life actually enjoyable, even though it is very often found in things that promise fun.
Trying to find how to approach our days and outlook with a reduced amount of darkness can feel overwhelming or even futile, but it’s not. There really is nothing easily accessible in our culture, including religion, that gives us a clear guide on how to do this. But by paying better attention to what makes us feel stress, we can identify what needs to go.
Nature seems like the most obvious answer to the question of where to turn, and there is a lot of light to be found there. But nature needs our help too. And places that give us access to nature are monetized very often for anyone in an urban area, or they can be filled with people, or be unpleasant in bad weather.
It’s hard. Our world, our society fail us on this, but it’s a quest worth pursuing.
Lead with love. Innocence. Silliness. Creativity. Things that stimulate the mind like puzzle solving. Build something. Swim. Travel, if you can. Have a conversation with someone willing to delve past small talk. Spend time with the non-humans living alongside us. Meditate. Listen to soothing music. Prepare food that excites you. Take a walk. Listen to the rain. Dance. Play.
We can do this. There is a very strong message these days that we who are adults must always be very impressive adults. The things we spend time on, we are encouraged, should check something off a list or be worthy of posting about online. Try, instead, to stop taking photos of life and be in it instead. Forget the resume. Stop comparing, and sit with yourself to discover what actually makes you happy. If social media didn’t exist, and if social interactions were not built around the ‘so what have YOU been up to lately’ competition war of shininess, who would you be? How would you live?
Resist, also and ironically, the rabbit hole of everything scary about modern life being made to be your fault. We can all help causes, but most if not all of us cannot actually replace a sitting president (for example). You, reading this, cannot single-handedly stop a war. You cannot shelter all of those without safety. Resisting is important. It has its place and time, but sometimes we need to resist resisting too. To be loving people, we need to be more than someone standing on a soapbox screaming and pointing. Peace can be a wonderful guide to more hidden solutions to complex problems. Quiet can be full of beautiful secrets that are only found by lingering there. There is an undercurrent to existence that is very complicated, with many layers and plentiful nuance, that is completely bound and gagged by modern ways of living. The patterns technology and a work-centered view have boxed us into are deeply unhealthy.
Discovering how to approach life beyond darkness is not easy or without psychological struggle. But we are each of us worthy of light. The darkness has too strong a hold on ways we are trying to endure more happily. Give yourself permission to enjoy things again, but in a sincere way that breaks free of pride or vanity.
Love and blessings, friends.