Spending time in darkness
And I don’t mean with the lights out…
Every day has a period of light and a period of darkness; it’s the natural rhythm of things. Likewise every life, though sometimes, rather than oscillating in predictable patterns like our days, we can get stuck a while in darkness.
It can be a bad thing and can lead people to make decisions that have terrible consequences. That’s a little front of mind for me at the moment as I grow my moustache for Movember, the global men’s health charity that focuses on testicular and prostate cancer as well as men’s mental health and suicide prevention. Did you know that globally, 78% of the people who die by suicide are men? In places like the UK and the US, it’s over 80%. Tragic.
That’s not what this post is about though. Rather, I want to share with you a text I wrote in December, 2018 as I was emerging from a lengthy period in darkness. It doesn’t happen often that I’m in that place, but back in July 2018, I read a paper that spoke about societal collapse and possible human extinction as a result of climate change. I knew such possibilities already and had spoken about them at presentations, but somehow that paper hit me hard and plunged me into a deep pit of despair.
It took me a long while to emerge. My blog describes something of the experience I had down there.
One thing I want to share is the notion of wallowing in it a while. Sometimes, when we’re in darkness, we strive and struggle to get out of it. My experience - though I’ve never been in quicksand - is that it’s like trying to get out of that sticky place; by struggling, you make it worse and just sink further.
I found this in my time of great despair in the second half of 2018 and after a brief time of trying to talk myself out of it, “Yay, come on, let’s be positive!”, I just leant into it. I stopped there and wallowed. I think it like being a tea bag. I was steeping in my despair.
In the blog, there’s a link to a wonderful video by Australian cartoonist and philosopher Michael Leunig where he speaks about what he does when he’s lost like that. I urge you to take the 20 minutes to watch the video. It’s beautiful and though I quote him in the text, his presentation, from a 2013 conference on Happiness, is so uplifting.
I’ll not say more by way of introduction as I’d love you to take a moment to read the blog and watch the video.
I am sharing this now not because I am in darkness; I’m not, but today I chatted to one of our community members about being lost and in darkness and how this can actually be an important part of making us whole. It’s not as straightforward as that for some where darkness and despair can lead to depression and desperation, sadly, sometimes to suicide. We don’t want that. But being OK with darkness from time to time and using the experience to become more whole can be a good thing; strange as that sounds.
That said, if you find yourself feeling lost or in darkness, please feel free to reach out.
Meanwhile, here’s the blog: