some dark (and some light)

Sometimes the dark is scary in the morning.

When you’re alone though, a lot of things feel more scary than they need to be.
I wake up early on so many mornings to open the shop. My hand stumbles around a glass of water half perched on a wad of grocery store receipts and loose change to turn on my lamp.

Sometimes the light stings and I wiggle around for a moment and think to myself, “I am totally taking a nap after work today.”

But it doesn’t matter. Waking up before 6am has always been rough. Perks of working in the coffee and breakfast industry. Maybe it’ll get easier the older I get. Or maybe I’ll finally go to bed before midnight. Something I haven’t been able to do since college.

I often wander into a dark morning. It’s quiet. Unseasonably warm, this time of year, so I don’t have to sit in an ice cold car before my small commute to work. Some days, when I feel like I need more assurance, I turn on my cell phone light, just to make sure I don’t stumble on roots that have decided to lay a home in my front yard for the past 80 years or so.

I don’t mind them.

I fumble around a few spider webs that hang their threads in between the same branches — they inevitably get destroyed by my large frame every day. Those who know me know that I don’t like spiders, and I don’t know any one who likes walking into a spiderweb. But, it’s something I’ve gotten used to with these low hanging branches and vines.

I often get tangled in things I don’t understand.

I once met a guy in an anarchist community while living in Portland. He said something to me I’ll never forget.

“I embrace the dark as much as I embrace the light.”

I’m sure it meant something more substantial to him — but I was taken back a bit. Aren’t we supposed to run away from darkness? Isn’t light what we’re always striving to walk towards?

There is a lot of truth in that statement. The yin and the yang.

There is always dark, and there is always light. If you’re any type of human being, you have lived in both and if you’re reading this, have survived some of the darkest moments of your life.

I’ve learned about some of my greatest depths in the dark when I couldn’t see much further than the speck upon the horizon. But, life brings you there.

The guy I met in the anarchist community then invited me to strip naked and join their group in their homemade sauna to welcome the new moon, but I politely declined and took it as a sign that I needed to go home.

There is so much to notice, in the light and in the dark. You learn lessons in both, and often times the light is big, and other times it is small. But still, you move through it and wake up to another day and another world that’s always blending light and dark.

Sometimes, you just have to get tangled and know that even in the great depths of your soul, there is always a light on the horizon.

So get up. (Get tangled.) And get moving.

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