In an adult world that thrives on the elimination of childhood fears and the adoptions of realistic approaches to living, there appears to be one trepidation from the early years of living that prevails even in the later stages of life: the fear of the dark. Before you click off off this page in expectation that I will bore you of statistics of how young adults today are also afraid of the dark closet in their bedroom or the ominous shadow from under the bed, I want to present one thought.
Darkness in our adult lives is not so much a lack of physical light, but a lack of space to acknowledge the dark. As we grow older, we gain a sense that we need to have our lives together, that we can never be messy, that we must not make mistakes. We close ourselves off to others, even those close to us, to present this idea that we are without flaw or fault. We do this to convince ourselves that we are secure in some systematic approach to the world in which we can keep up with those around us and potentially excel past them, claiming success for ourselves. The dark closets we keep as adults are not the ones in our rooms, but the spaces within our minds and souls that we work tirelessly to not let others see.
We walk with anxieties and depressions and ideas of the pasts that we have lives that we let hold us back. We live with emotional damage and baggage that surpasses any kind of physical ailment we could ever have. We are walking with years of experiences, good and bad, that have shaped who we are. Yet, despite all of these intricacies of our souls, we live with the audacity to display to others that we are put-together enough to never slip up. We think that if we organize the office desk of our minds and hearts that no one will ever open up the messy drawers stored below. We live in a world that is afraid of the dark, and even more afraid to shine light upon the unseen darkness to learn what is there. We foster the concepts that we may lose our inherent worth if there is anything but positivity and worldly success available for the public to see.
The fact of the matter is that this is not living fully. This is not experiencing the full potential of our own humanity. We were not meant to be placed in boxes with singular labels on the outside, as if we are all about to be shipped to a similar destination. We are all packages at a post office labelled for different places that we will reach within our lifetimes.
We are all intended for different journeys. These tasks, goals, jobs in our lives are not for one type of person, but for all. In this life, we cannot fear the dark. We cannot live in fear of what may happen if someone notices that we are not perfect, that we are struggling on a spectrum of mental illness, that we have been raised out of our mistakes and placed into something more.
We are all living our own authentic truths, and this factors in the fact that with good and bad, we are exactly who we are. We are ourselves not only in the light of day surrounded by a bumbling human neighborhood of existence but in the dark houses of ourselves that hold us alone at night and feed us the sources of who we truly are. We were not meant to be hidden, or fed shame as to who we are. We are meant to learn to accept ourselves, for the good and the bad, the beautiful and less than attractive, the social standard and the thing that euphemistically deems us "quirky." We are not meant to be only light.
While happiness is the greatest feeling on the planet, it is not the only emotion. Without sadness, we would not feel joy nearly as strongly when it occurs. When we feel peace, we can know the full extent of removal from conflict. Positivity is a catalyst for so much passion and opportunity in our lives, but even negativity has its benefits, perhaps even in simply making us critical thinkers. We need to break the stigma the only happy is good.
We need to create a society that does not merely thrive on "get over it" and "cheer up," but inspires free thinking and draws from the broadness of all different emotions, positive and negative, to create an expression of humanity that speaks the truth. It is time to illuminate the dark, not crowding out the dark parts of our lives with light, but bringing to light the real parts of each of us that make us human. This may very well be the scariest task of all, but if you could face your fear of the dark a kid, what's stopping you now?
