Everything I Know About Light I Learned from Darkness: A Short Meditation on Paradox.

2 Minute Read

The truth lives in the paradox.

Which is why, when you find yourself in the blackest of states, a part of you recognises the worth of it.

Though it threatens to consume you, it’s possible to feel the order of it; the inherent divinity.

Your marrow will tell you.

The dark promises you this:

“Lie with me here, and dream your way back to the light.
I am a part of you, as much as the sun.
Without me, shadow and contrast and color cease to be.”

Don’t discredit the purpose of darkness, its wisdom and its gifts.

Darkness can be a road back to light.
Darkness can reveal the light.
Darkness can even be the light.

The truth lives in the paradox:

In the moment a mother gives her child away—
for the sole reason of knowing that someone else could love him better.
Because she knows that he is a part of her, and yet not a part of her.

This act is fierce love and brutal suffering: all at once.

The truth lives in the paradox:

When an addict in recovery regains power through surrender.
As she bows down to something greater than herself, she is free.

That which brings her back to a state of Grace is both herself
and the sacred, infinite force that holds her: all at once.

The truth lives in the paradox:

When in a healing crisis, a patient experiences symptoms that read and feel like sickness—
but these symptoms are just a crucial step to getting well.
The sickness is the detox is the wellness: all at once.

The truth lives in the paradox:

Like when the oppressed take the same words that were created to harm them;
words like bitch, fag, queer—and turn them into tools.
With these words they claim sovereignty from the predominant culture’s definition,
and slay the hatred that once defined them.

The words hold both: the history of shame and the brave defiance of shame: all at once.

The truth lies in the mystery of things, the in-between.

The wholeness of life, it’s inclusivity.

You won’t find it in thieving dogma, the blanketed “half-truths,” the claims of “this way, only this way,” and “the only answer, the only reality.”

The truth is as complex as you are.
And it’s in there, waiting for you.