“AS FAR AS WE CAN DISCERN, THE SOLE PURPOSE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IS TO KINDLE A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS OF MERE BEING”.
Winters dark and gloomy mood is often a time when depression takes hold and even small efforts can seem too much. It is often the irritating nature of day to day life that we are expected to deal with that can become overwhelming.
It is so much easier to escape under the bed clothes, to draw the curtains and not acknowledge the world outside, peering out from under the covers unable to see beyond the dark. Walter Bagehot wrote “All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape”.
Winter can seem like a train going through a long dark tunnel, you know there is light at the end and that the relentless movement of the train will eventually get you there but whilst you are on the train you just can’t see it, it is so much easier just to pull up misery around our ears like a quilt and wallow.
Darkness is not always barren, nature chooses darkness as a safe place for new life to be conceived and carried. Shorter days can make life seem cosier and richer for being condensed, and like photographs many things develop in the dark. Mushrooms, cheese and good wine all mature in dark and gloomy places, and like spring bulbs once out in the light again they enrich our lives. Jean Genet wrote” A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness”.
In a world where everything is negotiable, you can execute your escape plan and use the gloom to lay dormant and unproductive, waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. Or you can be glad that winter is a time when life is narrow and confined, giving us time to dream and plan. Creating light in dark dusty corners will make life seem bigger, fuller and less gloomy.
“Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves”. Mark Haddon
Title quote by Carl Jung
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