Thursday, July 3, 2014

Darkness and Light

      For many years of my life I struggled with the idea of darkness. Growing up in my Christian School setting, I developed this idea that my inner human nature of sin was something I needed to separate from my "light", from God and all that I considered good of myself. From this, I mistakenly developed this idea that somehow self confidence = pride, which = sin, which = darkness. You can see why I was miserable there for a while. Thinking that any self confidence is something you need to get rid of immediately can get you to a dismal place. Mind you, too much confidence is bad, and a healthy fear of God is really nice to have. But, that is mostly just a rabbit trail. Back to the prize stag.
       I am prone to kind of these dark, gloomy brooding sessions. They are more prone to happen in the winter and leave me an emotional wreck at the end- so as nice as the wisdom that I find while in my deep blue funks are, sometimes I wonder if they are worth it and if they could please, at their earliest convenience, bugger off, if they would be so kind. But, seeing as how this has been a lifetime thing so far, buggering off does not seem to be something likely to occur soon. ANYWAYS. So, many times my brooding funks have taken me to evaluating light and darkness. Fun topics, I know. Real happy and fluffy. Kittens and all that. I don't know, but light and darkness are nice deep topics that my brooding side enjoys.
       After much of this brooding, and a great deal of thought on the matter while not in my brooding moods, I have concluded that my initial idea of separate light and darkness within me is, in fact, false. I mean, everybody knows that light and darkness are opposites, right? That means they can't mix? Well, you should probably contact a legit philosopher on this if you want more than my ramblings. However, I think humanity is more complicated than simple good and bad, light and dark. We were created as beings of purity and light, but we desecrated it in the pursuit of knowledge (ironic much, that?). So, now, we are inherently beings of the dark, but we all seem to have some light within us, at least at some point in our lives. But this does not mean that we have two sides, either. I tried that too, basically almost splitting my personality to light and dark, and ignoring what I considered dark. Well, that's what I told myself I was doing.
       When it comes down to it though, I think that human nature is more complicated than good and bad sides. The older I get and the more time I spend in the world, the more I am assured of this observation. Perhaps a better description would be a dual nature. We were given knowledge of good and evil in the Fall, and we say that Jesus had a dual nature of deity and humanity, so why couldn't this be the case? Perhaps we are at all times inherently good and evil, and our actions are dictated by situation and personality. This is not to say that God is not involved in this. He ultimately has the power to change situations to His will, and if He has saved us, then He has influence on our personality. So anyways, I figured out that once I got over the whole "banish the inner dark part of your soul" and moved on to "hey, I'm a mess, so let's work on fixing it" side of perspective, life has been a lot nicer for me to deal with. No more blame, etc. I am me, no blaming the devil or demons or "the dark side" (and, no, they don't have cookies), just flawed little me.
         Maybe I am just being silly once again. For what is darkness but absence of light? Maybe it is not possible for one to have light and not have it at the same time, or maybe my convoluted outlook is right for once.
         Maybe I need some color..... this black and white business is awfully bland
        And maybe I should just leave philosophy to those who think professionally.....

No comments:

Post a Comment