Darkness

"Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light" - this quote has been made many times in many forms, with religious origins it represents the belief that as long as there is hope, and light that represents something to hold onto and work towards then you can never be completely consumed by darkness.  "There is always light at the end of the tunnel" - this is another that represents a similar belief, that everything in life is a journey and that we may pass through darkness many times on that journey, but like any train or car that passes into the darkness of a tunnel, there is always light that awaits it at the other end.  That is of course if the tunnel isn't a dead-end.

These sayings represent the desire, if not the need, to convince ourselves that this isn't the end, this isn't our lot, there is much more for us to see and do, and we will see and do it all.  Patently though that isn't true and as admirable as those sentiments can be at times, they do run the risk of feeding people with false hope.  I am all for looking forward and looking to the future, and I am all for picking something positive to work towards, but only when those are realistic.  I have never been one to chase unrealistic goals.  I've never been one to set expectations for myself that I didn't think I could actually achieve - whether or not I was successful in those endeavours is irrelevant here, what is relevant is the motivation.

There are those who go through life with pipe dreams, things which will never happen that they chase and work towards.  I do have to wonder why people do these things, and whether or not on some level they actually know they can never achieve them or whether they have actually convinced themselves they can.  Ambition is a positive force in the world, it gives people something to aspire to, but if those aspirations are always unattainable then those ambitions will ultimately accumulate as failed endeavours and amount to a burden on the person who made them.  There has to be a point of realism in life where our goals and expectations are realistic, and represent things we could actually achieve.

When darkness clouds our judgement, it blinds us to the paths that lay in front of us.  We stand at a crossroads with no idea of the paths we could take, which usually leads us to one of three choices, the first to keep moving forward as that is the path we were already walking, the second is to stand still and move no more, and the third is to step back and walk back the way we came in comfort of the fact that this path at least we already know.  These three choices don't represent anything positive, the least egregious perhaps is to keep walking forward, at least in that instance some progress is made even if we have no idea where that progress is leading us.

For many of us in life when we lose our way, lose our ambitions, or simply abandon the paths we thought we would once take, we end up standing at that crossroads, able to see, yet still blind to the many paths that stand before us.  In those moments just as those who cannot see, we make the choice to continue forward, going through the motions, living our lives the same way we always have, day in and day out.

What we need in life more than anything is a spirit guide, someone to walk with us who can make us see in those moments that there are other paths open to us.  Someone who will make us realise that the path we take is indeed a choice and it is ours to take.  It is easy to let darkness convince us that there is only one path we can take, or that there are no paths at all and our only choice is to wander aimlessly forward in the blind hope that we will find a path somewhere along the way.

With my health troubles that I have been enduring, with each passing day I feel that paths in life are closing to me, I feel like I am living but I am no longer alive.  Each day comes and goes and I fill them with the same things as I do every other day.  My routine has become so engrained now that it has left me feeling low.  I need a new path to follow, I need a new direction in life.  That darkness has become so thick for me now and it is hard to find light and hope.