Have you ever felt afraid of the dark?
It’s natural to feel disoriented, even scared, when you cannot see as you can in daylight. But darkness has its own beauty and purpose. We, and all of nature, need time without light to rest and to grow. In the darkness, we can look inside ourselves and sometimes see ourselves and our world in new ways.
Adults, as well as children, become afraid in the dark. The night awakens imagination, which can play with our knowledge of the world’s real dangers. A child may be satisfied with a search in closets and under beds to prove no monsters lurk. But an adult may need to face their own “monsters” that come forth in the night.
With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea … Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?
—Henry Beston
Embrace the opportunity: If darkness makes you anxious, find a way in. Night’s quiet emptiness nurtures self-examination impossible in the bright, busy daytime. Breathe into any worries or regrets you are holding. Acknowledging them may free you to burrow into the rest you need.
While some adults truly fear an unlit bedroom at night, many more fear metaphoric darkness—unlit aspects of our lives that cause us despair or confusion. Indeed, our future is not known, but we might get acquainted with our own unanswerable questions. We can sit with them in the dark.
Mark Tyrrell, a therapist, suggests, “Reframe your idea of darkness.” Tyrrell trained a fearful client to wean herself from the light and use relaxation techniques at bedtime. The client found a new relationship with the night: “Now when I think about the dark, it feels like a friend, no longer the prowling enemy. It feels cozy; a wonderful velvety blanket of comforting rest time in which it doesn’t matter what I look like, what others think. A time into which I can escape and relish deep privacy.”
At night, or in your life, can you make the absence of light your friend?