Can Darkness Remind Us to Have Hope the Way Light Does?

 As a city girl, I used to observe the glimmer of city lights at night while I made my way home from the university. Some of them are frustrating just like the slow, flowing river of lights coming from vehicles congesting on the main roads. Others, however, give a mesmerizing visual effect such as the ones I see when I reach a few kilometers away from home—the dancing of colorful, flickering lights outside malls that break the cheerlessness of the deep, dark night.

©2017 Anne

Randomly thinking of city lights brings me to a sudden insight that we have extreme darkness to thank when we learn to appreciate the light—a somewhat pretty good metaphor I could think of concerning the challenges we face each day as well as what true and ideal relationships are about. Simply put, we should not condemn the misfortunes that came on our way. We have the dark, wretched episodes of our life to thank because it is where we get to know and appreciate the sincerest people who give us several reasons to carry on. Apart from that, these people deserve our gratitude for being our light, our hope during the times when we feel like we are getting used to the bitterness of the dark—when we think there is no light at the end of the tunnel. As for the real essence of true and lasting relationships, I say: let the sincerest and worth-cherishing ones who are the bright lights at our darkest moments remain, while the others who contribute to the bleakness of the dark, or to the complexity of problems, to drift away.