Fear of the Dark

Inside each of us there is a fear of some kind of dark. It seems no one stops needing some sort of night light. You may take this to the letter, but you can also extrapolate and find what lurks inside your personal darkness.

At times, it might be yourself. What happens when we are the scariest thing under the bed?

Well, we all have characteristics that we don't like, or bad times in which we can't be at our best. We can then show that inner beast, even if it's only to ourselves. It slowly comes out of the shadows and devours us without asking.

In spite of every scare we might catch with that beast, it generally disappears when the light comes, or better yet, transforms itself.

Remember the Japanese shadows theater? The image projected can be of many different forms, but in reality, it's still two hands articulating fingers. What I mean by this is, even that beast is still made from us, only altered by the way we articulate ourselves. The casted shadow can sometimes be really scary, to us and to others.

Life can sometimes brake or bend us. What happens is that if we aren't standing tall and proud, our shadow will be transformed into something else, and those who look only to the shadow won't recognize us. Those that look at us directly will never cease to see us for who we are, no matter how battered we've been. The natural reaction for any animal is to fight back when attacked. A cute dog with puppy eyes can also show some sharp teeth.

I haven't seen eternal night so far, so, no matter how scary my shadow might be, I'm confident that daylight will come eventually and change my shadow back to normal.

The night feels long and cold, but midnight has passed already. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm getting there.