Darkness, death, light, and life. 🌓 And writing.

At this time of year in the northern hemisphere, many of us who are welcoming spring and summer feel a sense of relief and expansion accompanying the extra light. I’ve been thinking about this response to the light and what we think of as its opposite: the dark.

In Nature, we observe birth, growth, decay, and death all around us, including in each other and ourselves. Nature reminds us we are each part of a great natural cycle that balances life with death and light with darkness. This cycle seems neutral, yet we humans have come to associate the light with life and the dark with death.

Darkness seems to be associated with death, at least emotionally, because it also represents mystery and the unknown, and we’re biologically wired to fear the unknown at first. But, if you think about it, life begins in darkness. Whether in the cocoon of the womb, the mycelium-laced soil below the earth’s surface, or the nether depths of the sea, darkness is home to life force.

Nonetheless, we favor the light. We associate it with positive things, while darkness carries the negative.

Yet Nature keeps offering another perspective: in the vastness of the Milky Way hangs the jewel of Earth; in the vastness of space our galaxy spirals, and in the vastness of the universe (let alone a multiverse) countless galaxies spin as beacons across the light years. All that energy (light) surrounded by immense darkness, the darkness giving it all room to grow.

I think it's time for a new and deeper understanding of darkness and death. Because we stash all that we don’t know or understand, all that we fear, feel confused about, or anticipate will generate pain into darkness, we have misunderstood our relationship with a huge portion of the source of life force.

What does any of this have to do with writing? Well…

The polarizing of light and dark, in terms of emotion and morality, has always been a powerful source of story conflict. Pit good against evil, and vice versa, and you’ll get a story. Stories are told using imagery and symbols—things stand in for other things. Ergo, light translates as good, darkness as evil (the unknown is feared and then demonized). Yet something gets lost in this polarizing interpretation. Let's shine a little light...

The power of light can be penetrative and expansive. It can puncture and push back the darkness so it can be understood for what it is, including understanding that some parts are not understandable at all and must remain mysterious. 

Light needs to travel through darkness to navigate it, understand itself in relationship to it, and shine itself into the crevasses of fear we project into it (to quote Frank Herbert, author of Dune: “Fear is the mind killer.”). And then we learn to live with it, to fully comprehend that life does not exist without its counterpart, death. And light doesn’t exist without darkness. Nature shows us this.

I think it’s our job right now, as writers and storytellers, to begin to untangle the symbolic associations of good and evil from life/death and light/darkness. In so doing we can use the light of knowing to penetrate confusion and expand awareness. We need stories to lead us out from the darkness of mistaken perceptions (especially about each other, different beliefs, other countries and ways of living).

We don’t need to fully disentangle the symbols and meanings (I don’t think we can), only enough to understand that that’s what they are.

Stories are metaphors that express the human condition and help us figure out how to live. They are not direct prescriptions. Their symbolism must be interpreted, and their mysteries are only revealed through the light of thoughtful understanding and respectful discourse.

As writers we wrestle with the mysterious process of creation to craft symbols and messages that help us and others understand the relationship between light and darkness, life and death. We show their necessary coexistence, the conditions that ensue, and the choices left to us within those conditions, as well as the consequences of those choices. When the metaphor is interpreted adequately, we absorb new insights and inspiration for how to live our lives.

One compelling character in one compelling story in one pervasive religion died and was resurrected this weekend, or so the story goes. His story showed us the symbols, the mystery, the light, dark, good, evil, and living and dying. People have been wrestling with these paradoxes for thousands of years. Many world stories explore these paradox of being human, of being alive, knowing death awaits us all, and that’s why writers need to pay attention. We work at the crossroads of the dark cave and the light-filled peak every time we create. We interpret the symbols so we can carry the messages humans need to hear.

"We all fear death and question our place in the universe. The artist's job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence."
~ Gertrude Stein ~

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."

~ James Michener ~