The Dark and The Light

Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. - Frederick Buechner

Mural in Lisbon by Shepard Fairey the OG turning despair into beauty

A friend lost her 2 month old baby this week.

Another friend just accepted her dream job.

It is so hard existing in the world and holding both of these experiences.

Being with both of these people, in the same place with such extremely different experiences.

How do you celebrate joy fully while also mourning deeply?

I think the way to live in 2026 - in this strange, loud, beautiful, terrible year - is with open hands. Both of them. Palms up. Letting the light land and letting the darkness land and letting them both fall through, the way sand falls through your fingers when you stop trying to catch it.

Not resignation.

Not apathy.

Not giving up.

The danger of staying too long

The challenge is in staying.

If you stay in the darkness too long, you forget that light exists.

The dark becomes the whole world.

You start to believe that anyone telling you about morning is either lying or hasn't been where you've been.

The longer you stay, the more the darkness becomes proof - proof that there was never anything else, proof that hope was always naive, proof that the people who still seem to be carrying any light must just not understand yet.

When I was in the midst of a particularly dark moment I didn't even want to hear about good things. I didn't want to hear about other people's joy or hope.

I just wanted to lie in the dark until there was nothing else.

But people kept bringing me light.

People kept bringing goodness and joy and hope to me.

Little sparks of light.

So that I wouldn't forget that it existed.

Conversely

If you bask in the light too long, you forget how desperately it's needed somewhere else.

You start to think the light is just yours. 

That it's a given.

You start to forget what the darkness was like and just assume everyone around you is soaking up the light.

You forget that other people are sitting in rooms right now where they can't remember what morning feels like.

You stop being a person carrying light into darkness because you stop going into the darkness altogether.

You become a person sunbathing while a friend freezes one room over.

The danger of the light is not that it'll burn you. The danger is that it'll make you forget.

So you can't stay. Not in either place.

If you are surrounded by beauty right now, that is not the prize. That is the supply. You were not given this stretch of light so you could keep it to yourself. You were given it so you'd have something to bring back to those still in the dark.

Keep moving

I don't know what the right answer is.

But I know it's not nothing.

When the darkness comes,

it is my hope that your people bring you sparks of light.

May you have the strength to keep breathing.

And when the light comes?

Share it.

Bring it to your people who are surrounded by darkness.

Be their reminder that the light still exists.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.

Don't be afraid.