Throughout the past year, and more specifically, the past week, I have thought a lot about the constant ebb and flow of life. Its unpredictable tides. How things never stay too good for too long. And how things never stay too bad for too long.

Point blank, I thought a lot about how things don't stay. The fleetingness of it all.

I know that we all have bad seasons of life. That things are often times very dark and valleyed. That at times, we feel utterly hopeless or broken. Or alone. And maybe this lasts for a few months or a even a few years. When life does nothing but kick us while we're down. And it's easy for that to make us bitter or cruel. It's easy to cultivate hatred and wrath in a time that seems to give us no light. No understanding. Or sympathy.

But after all of this questioning. After all of these rash opinions being thrown in my face. These back and forth emotions, I think I know now what happens in dark times.

I was laying down one night, looking at the sky in the small town of Auburn, Alabama. Now back home, in an urban city, I'm used to the light pollution, the absence of stars. But I was so confused as to why, on a clear night, I couldn't see anything but darkness in a small college town like this. But the closer I looked and the longer I stared at the sky, the more and more stars I saw. They were faint. Easily lost. Almost invisible if you weren't looking for them.

And I think that's a lot like what happens to us when life gets hard. We can't see the light unless we're looking for it. We can't feel its warmth. Or see how much it illuminates. And if you're anything like me, it's difficult in those times to keep your chin up or to look up and focus on the good.

During these seasons of life, we are often times lied to. Because contrary to popular belief, our lives are not being destroyed. We're never irreparably separated from one another. We are not surrounded by some sort of immense darkness. Or absolute hopelessness. Or some sort of irreversible eclipse.

We're actually surrounded by an immeasurable amount of light.

People won't always hurt you or mock you or disappoint you or treat you unfairly. Life and its agents will get bored with knocking you down. New stars will come to be, and maybe burn brighter than the ones before. But you'll never notice them if you don't look. The subtleness of it all. Profoundly forgotten. Deemed as absent. Or elsewhere.

So in dark times, I think we have to look beyond the night and the cold. Beyond the hardships and the pain. Because no matter how cheerless or bleak things may seem, there's a lot more light than you may realize. And you won't find it looking at the ground. And you won't find it in self-pity. And you won't find it dwelling on a broken heart or spirit. And you won't find it tearing people down for what they believe in. And you won't find it in bitterness or cruelty.

And whatever you believe stars to be: alien worlds, spheres of searing hot gas held together by gravity, living and breathing celestial bodies, or our spirits when we die, they work tirelessly to be seen by us. It takes light years for their rays to reach us with very little recognition, but they do it anyways.

They give us something to look for when life seems the most dark. They give us a hope that darkness can be driven out entirely if a star is close enough and bright enough. And if we look up toward it together. If we, as one, indivisible human race, focus on the light, perhaps it won't be so lost to us.

And when the sun rises in the mornings, we'll realize that darkness is fleeting. And when the sun sets at night, we'll realize that light is also fleeting. But during the night, if we look up hand in hand, I think we'll realize that the light never truly leaves us. Any of us.

So I think that's what happens in dark times. Stars often get muddled and dim. Murky and forgotten. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

It doesn't mean that a new day isn't coming. It doesn't mean that the next night won't be clearer. And it doesn't mean that we'll always feel them or see them or know that they're there.

It means that no matter how dark, we must always look for the light.