Darkness

By Ekant Sharma

What comes to our mind when we hear the word darkness? something which people are afraid of, fear and want to move away from towards the bright side. Why is light always used as a metaphor for truth, happiness, bliss and positivity but darkness is for pain and guilt when even you do your greatest work and introspections under the blanket of darkness but to celebrate the very success of those sleepless night you choose light and it takes all the credit for your achievement. why is it that darkness is for sorrows and light is for delight of life? We always curse the darkness and wait for light to come and bring happiness along with it, but what we all forget is that darkness was our loyal friend, our only hope with whom we shared our pain, our deep- down thoughts and desires, darkest secrets, it is the one on whose lap we lay down and cry our heart out and also the one which hides us when we are in our most vulnerable and weak state and cannot face the world. There is something special about darkness, it never tells your secrets to anyone, your true friend which was and will always be there for you whom you remember when you want to cry and share the pain but as soon as our wounds are healed, we go and sit in the lap of bright light but darkness never complaints, it smiles and rejoice on your happiness and get ready for another soul to confess its desires to her.

And just like outside we also have a darkness inside all of us which we always choose to not look after and tries to hide it under the cloak of rationality and morals. But why is it so?

That very moment when you realize that you are enslaved in your body believing that you are controlling everything around you but in reality you are masquerading on the stage set for you by the time and there you are catering to the whimsical needs of the society who abnegate responsibilities on you and leave you in eternal purgatory where you are trying to satisfy other’s ego and believing that it will ultimately lead to the art which conciliates social acceptance and love and so you run away and away from your own darkness, your evil side, your passions and run towards reasoning, morals, norms and side of angel and light, not knowing that your inner darkness will not change its colour, it will not judge you for your ill-mannered behaviour, dark fantasies, evil secrets, for the urge to break the rules set by society which narrows down your creativity and make you hustle towards your daily survival, bad shape of body or your ugly face. Our darkness is like a one-sided lover who loves us the way we are without trying to change us or illuminate us and is there for us but never complaints when we leave it for single ray of light because what darkness embrace is those desires of our personality which we often fail to accept.

For ages we humans try to condemned the characteristics of darkness and accepting light as our knight thinking that it will lead to us towards wisdom but Should not acceptance means taking everything into account which by default will also include desires which are undesirable. But most of us often fail to do so and when we deny the very existence of these undesirable desires, we also deny some other traits along with it like creativity, imaginations, sexual preferences, originality etc. we start betraying not only society but also our very own conscious by wearing a mask of wisdom and reasonableness and walk down the path of light completely ignoring the darkness which is walking side by side, hand in hand with our very existence. The more we deny our darker side the deeper it grows and starts an internal battle inside our heads and we keep fighting the dissonance, the darkness, cursing it instead of embracing its very existence and which ultimately leads to the eruption of a volcano of destruction which ultimately burns away the persona which we are carrying along with us. We need to start accept our ugly dark side in order to value the light, else what will be the basis for light if there is no darkness and being human means that you embrace the both by integrating the darkness along with positive side so that we can cultivate the amalgamation of darkness and light to create unique and creative elements from the blend of both.

By Ekant Sharma