Balance

I spent some time at a local pond. It was around 9pm. No one was around, and my only company was the local ducks. There were a couple of bats flying above me doing, what it looked like, laps of the pond.

I was getting annoyed at the street lamps because of how bright they were. There is something relaxing about looking out into the night’s sky; and there is something about man’s unhinged contempt for all things natural, that became ever so evident as the light from the street lamps added an annoying glow that washed out the beauty of the universe.

I found myself becoming angry; we build over fields and forests, we build roads and concrete over the land, and we even try to combat the nature of the sky and the darkness that it brings. Perhaps it was not the street lights specifically that filled me with such despair, but rather it was the culmination of what has felt like an ever increasing assault on nature.

It epitomised to me, society’s desire and need for control; it is not content with indoctrinating us and manipulating our time and energy for corporate gain and personal greed, it is not sufficient that we are bled dry of joy and empathy and left numb at the terrors and overreach. No, the powers that be are not satisfied that they have broken us; they want to extend their control to the rivers, to the forests, to the seas, and even to the skies above us.

I find it very challenging to go through life feeling the heaviness of what I feel is society’s contempt for people. And when I say society, I do not mean society as a collective of the people - what I mean is the wider system. We are all part of society, and so it’s hard not to feel burdened when society is unbalanced - and it feels very unbalanced currently.

It’s also hard to shake off that feeling of responsibility. Of course I should not have that burden solely on my back, and I will preach about looking at what you can control - but it is hard, and sad, to see and feel just how unnatural and bad things are sometimes. It feels as though we, and I, should be doing something.

As I looked up at the sky, trying to pierce through the haze of the street lamps, I also thought about the night sky in itself, and perhaps saw something of a reprieve from my disdain for how things are.

I am an emotional person. I can be ruled by those emotions, and often, the negative emotions can weigh heavy and the light side of me, the unburdened, free, and joyful me, is hidden beneath the surface. When you are weighed down with negativity, it acts like a jacket, and actually it prevents you from feeling and experiencing the good emotions. You become numb to everything around you, perhaps as a way to survive, but also perhaps because that is what a heavy blanket of negativity does. It is all consuming and it blocks out everything, including, emotions, of which it is.

I thought about what it meant for it to become night. Of course, it is the spinning of the earth, and the absence of sunlight as we face away from that massive ball of gas and fire in the sky; but I thought about what it meant, from a more poetic perspective.

The night sky was a reminder for me that despite everything, things will correct themselves and times will change. Life is about balance, and the universe operates in such a way that means that balance is inevitable.

Night time is the reaction to the day - for all the action and heat of the day, the world needs to take a deep breath and to sleep. For every day there is a night; it is a breath in and a breath out. We have both summer and winter, and we have both hot and cold.

And perhaps there is an argument that one cannot exist without the other, in the same way that we can only experience happiness if we know what it is like to experience an absence of happiness.

The pain we feel when we lose a loved one can only be felt because we have loved so strongly. Grief is the price we pay for having felt so much happiness and joy.

To experience highs of any sort, we must know what it is like to experience the low. It seems perverse to look at pain and sadness and the lows they bring and see them in a positive light, but without those feelings we cannot experience the amazing and beautiful emotions that gives us such highs.

The ironic thing is that, much like when we’re buried in such negativity, too much of something causes us to become numb. A life of pure happiness sounds amazing, but if the only feeling you ever felt was happiness, you would lose all context of what it means. Perhaps it is why we enjoy sad songs and films with such emotional roller coasters. Yes, we want outcomes to be positive, but what really allows us to feel is the ups and downs along the way. We need to experience both sides to truly understand and enjoy the positive. Which is perhaps a good lesson for life - it’s not about a destination or a feeling, it’s about experiences; both good and bad. We want to feel and to do that we need to experience as much of life as we can.

Which leads me back to society.

As it tries to tighten its grip on us, there was something about looking at the night sky that gave me hope. The harder and further that we’re pushed, the greater the reaction when things strike back to become balanced. And just the notion that things will come to pass, is in itself a reassuring notion. I’m reminded of Sam’s speech in the Lord of the Rings:

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

And so I am left with a feeling of optimism, despite the heaviness in my heart.

We are taught not to feel and to not express ourselves. We are so often bound by the chains of societal expectations, corporate greed, and the egos and narcissists with far too much power. Society looks to seek more and control, and us, much like, and as part of, nature - pay the price for the unnatural crusade of our rulers and the dark and evil people in this world.

But despite that, the sparks that each of us have inside of us have the potential to bring about such light and emotion back into the world, and that fills me with hope. We are emotional creatures with dreams and desires. We are boundless, and it is time that we are allowed to flourish. It is time for each of us to unshackle from the dogma and false scripts that we are burdened with by the society around us, and to start realising our own powers.

We must acknowledge that we cannot allow ourselves to become numb. We are feeling a lot, and a lot of painful and heavy negativity, but that should not mean that we stop all feelings. We must allow ourselves to experience all that life has to offer, for it is the only way that we can truly experience the highs and joys that the universe has to offer.

We need to feed the light within us. We must push ourselves to be all that we can be; and the only way to do that is to face challenges head on, to lose, to face setbacks, and to keep moving forward. We must learn to see the positives in the negatives, and to learn from our defeats. The stronger we become, and the more we flourish and allow our sparks to burn brighter and truer, the more we allow light to be shared for others; either by leading the way or by filling the void and pushing back the darkness.

Just as the night returns after day, so too does balance return; perhaps it is we who are those who must bring about the balance that we seek to see?