About a month ago I had lunch with two of my childhood friends, as is our wont to do these lunches once in a month. Few days later, one of the friends is heading out to Himalayas to undertake a hike that would take him to 17,000+ feet. He by the way, successfully completed the hike without any incidences. We are so proud of him. But I digress. As I was driving back home, a random thought struck me. I was thinking of the Milkyway shoot, and I realized that we seem to take the darkness as a metaphor for ignorance, evil, negativity etc., and turn it around make darkness a bad guy. Instead of darkness being a metaphor, we seem to go other way, i.e., evil is darkness therefore, darkness is bad, or ignorance is darkness therefore, darkness is not desirable, negativity is darkness, therefore darkness is bad. It is fine to metaphorically describe evil as darkness, but should that mean darkness is evil? I think not. You catch my drift and can see where I am going with this train of thought.
Couple of weeks ago, I met an ex-colleague of mine at a lunch. We were good acquaintances, and nothing more. As we were indulged in a small talk, he kind of blustered about life and failures. Then he made this remark: “thank god my parents were cremated, otherwise they would be rolling in their graves”. I was taken aback by his statement and thought, he has taken the metaphor “rolling in the grave” too literally and even trying to get some succor for his angst with that literal interpretation. At that moment, I did not have heart to correct him and say his parents may still be rolling in that metaphorical grave. Then he made comment that startled me immensely. He said the that as much as he misses his parents, he is also relieved that they are not alive anymore to see his failures and how he let them down. I know he has a successful career; a very happy personal life, from what he says; in full health. I wanted to know what that feeling of letdown was that made him think that his parents not being around is a silver lining. It broke my heart to hear him say that about his parents, but his existential angst is a fodder for another day.
The encounter with my ex-colleague has pushed me to an inference. I have come to posit that darkness has its own beauty and wonderful treasures if one knows how and where to look for them. It is not evil, there is considerable knowledge in it, and it is positively brimming with what else positivity or at the least it leads to light and hope (it is darkest before dawn).
Take for example the following two images. The first one has milkyway in it and other is called a dark frame. It is used to extract the milkyway out of the other image. So much for the negative effect of dark(ness) frame.
The metaphors taken literally mean that these two should be discarded, rejected and stay away from it as if your life depends on it. If I were to take them for what they are, rather than view them (no pun intended) as the metaphors intended, I will be missing out on this image below.
To put it succinctly, we tend to take means to an end and make it an end in itself. This tendency seems to be in our DNA. To what benefit, I do not know. I have seen that in my long career as well. To wit, almost every organization I worked for had incentives for exemplary performance of its employees. After initial period, where the performance is recognized through incentives, I saw my team members behavior began changing gradually. They started targeting their projects and deliverables more towards earning the incentives. Which is exactly the opposite of the spirit of the incentives provided by the organization. I have personally gone through the same behavior change while dealing with my diabetes in the early days of my treatment. I would be fixated on my HbA1c numbers so much that I would lose the sight of the big picture.
I was chuffed with the thought that I came upon an interesting theory, even a clever one, but my exuberance didn’t last long. To my surprise, I came upon a formal religion which is now (more or less) defunct that made this ideology of associating darkness and light to evil and good. Our ancestors have already come up with Manicheism ( Manichaeism – Wikipedia ) as far back as in 3rd century. Thus, my ego deflated; my hubris dispelled; my superciliousness shattered; consequently, now my darkness dissipated, and I am “enlightened”, I will crawl back under the photographic rock I came out of, and thus continues my irony of existence, which as it turns out, albeit ironically, is the title of a peom by Ric Bastasa,
