The return of the light?
Dawn always follows the night, whenever we fear that the darkness will overcome us we have to remember that no state of being lasts forever, change is the only certainty and the light will return. When winter is at it's height we rally together in defiance of the cold and shortest day to celebrate our enduring nature, that we know that spring will come again, that it will bring back the warmth of summer and the joy of the precious sunlight that feeds us and empowers us to grow. Even when we can not physically be in the same place, we light a candle so that we can remember each other, the flame contains the spirit of our connections, a living symbol of a hope that burns within us all. It is always with us, we have a flame in our hearts that can not be extinguished by even the worst of times, though we can be distracted from it's intensity by external events, however it always waits for our awareness to come back to it, for us to return to the light.
It is not always an easy journey, the world is full of shadows that wish to trick us and they can feel real when we are watching them, we can become immersed in the story that they tell us and we can forget ourselves. In the same way that we get lost in a movie, the shadow play of our mind tells us a compelling story, we watch characters suffer troubles (especially ourselves, we are the star after all!), they make mistakes in thinking that are overcome by the end (or not in tragedy) and whilst most people want a happy ending in the movies. In our own lives we find that tragedy is much more believable, it has the ring of truth, afterall we know that the happy ending in a film is a matter of editing, ending the story when you marry the prince rather than after three children, a messy divorce and crippling debt. However maybe our own lives is the same, we look at the editing, the end is sad therefore it can only be a sad story when the joy is in the telling, the ups and downs that each life contains and everyone includes their own happy ending and wonderful journeys.
When trouble comes after a crisis and on top of disaster, we feel that it can only be that way, that is narrative and every sub-plot, but life is not simple or just one story, it is every story that can be told. It contains love stories, drama, comedy (so much comedy, some of it quite dark but comedy nevertheless) and then there is the absurd. Which can dominate so many of the in-between moment between the plots and themes that we try and tell ourselves that makes sense of the story and give us meaning and purpose to us life, when really our lives are all about the absurd, the silly and ridiculous, that is the majority of what happens. That is the reason for so much inappropriate and completely human laughter at funnels, the tears at birth, marriages and relationships, the fumbles and missteps at the moments when we should be elegant, we fall down but what matters is that we get up again with elegance.
Life is a series of bad moments, when the light disappears and we feel like it will be dark forever, that our current state will never end that we are struck, and then everything changes and we fear that too. We fear to lose that which we love and cherish, we can be trapped between different contrary fears at the same time, and yet we can stop at anytime, the light can always return, just as spring returns after winter. There is no need to wait, just stop and truly be where you are, what you are, just be present, be awareness of everything that is occurring in this moment, there is not room for worries, fears and regrets when you are truly present, that is the greatest gift that you can ever receive from another or yourself. To just be in the moment is joy, not in an abstract kind of way but in the real presence of joy way, joy is what is left when all of that so human emotion is stripped away, when you stop worrying, planning, second guessing, fortune telling, labelling, personalisation, emotional thinking (that what you feel is real and true) and mindreading. These are the traps that cause depression, the distorted thinking that leads into the roundabout of negative thoughts and feelings, and to escape these traps is to feel joy of freedom.
Though it should be noted, that depression does not just happen to individuals but to societies as a whole. Political divides are just the labelling of others so that you can right off entire sections of our communities as irrelevant, evil and not worth listening to, it makes life simple but also scary as the world splits into them and us. It is easy to just listen to people you agree with and not waste any compassion for someone who you think is wrong both in their views and their being, but there is no wrong, no evil just people who think differently, who are afraid and full of fear. It is easy to love someone who is nice and agreeable, but loving the difficult is hard and yet that is where the growth is, that is how you become a better person because the hardest person to love is yourself as you know how lacking you are. It is easy to ignore that opportunity, the chance to be better, it is safe to stay the same with fixed judgements, but life is not meant to be easy, it is challenging and they never stop coming, everyone you defeat is replaced by a dozen more. Even people who become enlightened have to travel through the dark nights of the soul, they need the contrast in order to recognise the light and accept their imperfections.
The world as a whole is no different, we have to travel through those dark nights, through winter, crisis and despair, to get through to the spring of hope, renewal and a better world. There is always sacrifice, the giving up of something to get to a better place, sometimes we fall back but the history of the world is a slow drunk walk of two steps forwards and one back. Things do get better and the light always returns, and we light the candles, we hear the light inside through pray, meditation or just plain listening to what is happening in the present moment and our hopes are answered by that presence, by having presence in the current moment as that moment is always illuminated by the light that each one of us contain, that is the joy and joy can always returns if we allow it, the light always returns.
