Over the last few weeks I’ve been running into a recurring theme that I’d like to share with you. I still don’t know why it keeps popping up, but maybe I’ll clear my conscious thoughts and shake the subconscious ones to the surface, to the light.
The theme I’ve come across is the idea that:
“You can’t have only light. You need darkness to see the light.”
And a variation on the theme:
“You can never tell how beautiful it is when it’s beautiful if you don’t know how ugly it is when it’s ugly.”
There are many thinkers who have explored this contrast between good or evil, light or dark, ugly or beautiful. Starting even with Lao Tsu in the Tao Te Ching:
“In Heaven, all can recognize beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can recognize good as good only because there is evil.”
The question I ask myself is: what conclusions do I draw from these recurring themes? What do they mean for me, for you, for us?
Is it that there is a balance between good and evil, between light and darkness? A reflection of the Eastern principle of Yin and Yang, of the balance of nature?
Fine, fine, but what does it mean to me?
Interestingly, the Buddhists did not consider beauty and ugliness as two absolute entities, but relative. They saw them as comparative judgments of our mind. That got me thinking. Because when we relate to something as “beautiful”, we do so in contrast to a less pleasant, more “ugly” experience.
But, in my naivety, I believe that if you do a good deed, it’s not imperative to make up for it with something bad just to reflect that balance. On the contrary, from good would be born good. It would be like a vortex of good that grows as good deeds add to the vortex of deeds.
Like an egregor that fills itself with good thoughts and deeds and spills out, full of light, on us, generating more good.
So would evil and darkness increase as the volume of good increases? It doesn’t make sense. So I don’t think it’s about balance, I think it’s about the power of contrast.
A background against which good and light are reflected.
Maybe that’s why we need darkness: to see how bright the light can shine. To remember how much a simple gesture, a kind word, an outstretched hand can make a difference.
Honestly, I don’t know what the answer really is, but I’ll stick to my naivety and offer a few thoughts:
- I don’t think we have to look for darkness or suffering in order to understand the light, but that inevitably, when they appear, to notice them and understand that they are part of life.
- That the idea of Yin-Yang does not mean that there is a balance between two equal amounts of good or evil, darkness or light, but simply shows us the contrast of the two. Light can only emerge from darkness, but once it has emerged, everything is light.
- That it is our conscious choice on the amount of good and bad and we do not have a “duty” to balance them. Good will beget good, light will shine even brighter alongside other light.
- And, perhaps most importantly, that light is not the absence of darkness, but it is our willingness to overcome the dark, hard days and come back stronger. We live not in a perfect world, but in a world of contrasts that shape us and help us grow.
So when life throws you into an area of darkness, you already know that that’s where the light comes from. It’s the backdrop against which your light shines, it’s the foundation that helps you grow.
What do you think?
Claudiu
