Humaning is hard (the thoughts, the feels, the responsibilities)—but it's not a pathology.
Anyone who knows me, my work, or reads my words knows that I do not support a “positive vibes only” approach to life.
It is not that I want to sink into the moroseness of depression, but that I love the Shadow and taboo, the dark, gritty, cold, and grimy as much as I love sun-drenched fields and spring blossoms.
I love decay and the cold kiss of winter blowing the browning leaves across my path as my pull my jacket tight and dash through an evening that would have still been flush with light a mere few weeks ago. There is a grace in the darkness, in the loneliness, in the heart of grief and even in the bowels of depression.
There is a raw, blurred beauty in the Dark.
Besides, only looking on the bright side of things will have us blinded by the light. And it is not the real light, it is a kind of false light that seeks to illuminate everything within and around us, in spite of the fact that life needs Darkness to thrive.
The personification and deifying of The Light whilst completely depersonalizing and even vilifying The Dark has led to an entire host of neuroses.
According to Clark Strand (as written about in his book, Waking Up to the Dark: The Black Madonna’s Gospel for an Age of Extinction and Collapse), all of our neuroses can be traced to the introduction of (and ever-increasing dependency on) artificial light. Relentless illumination changes us: spiritually, emotionally, hormonally, and physically. We are not biologically designed to be constantly saturated in light. We need the the velvet embrace of the Dark as well.
What happens to us when we cut ourselves off, not only from a crucial element of our own psyche (the Dark), but also from necessary natural occurrences (such as the visceral experience of twilight, liminality, and starlight)? We become agitated, restless, despondent—neurotic.
The word is derived from the Latin root neuro (pertaining to nerves) and neurotic (adj) is a term coined by the Scottish physician, William Cullen, in 1776. He speaks of it as being a "functional derangement arising from disorders of the nervous system (not caused by a lesion or injury)”. Curiously, if we look at the Galen origins it pertains to “sinew, bowstring”. Many of us have either heard the saying (or can directly relate to) being tightly wound.
It’s taken me years to realize how “wound up” I have been for most of my life. If is habitual. There have been so many indicators that point to me having an anxious constitution, signs such as: speaking quickly, picking at my skin, upset stomach, difficulty focusing or, on the flip-side, hyper focusing. As a child, I could lose myself for hours in books, but I also had the groundedness of nature all around me. We would play in the mountain runoff-cooled creeks in the summer, build snowmen and snow forts, and chuck snowballs at each other in the winter and in every in-between season would ride our bikes, hike, and camp.
I spent more time with my feet, my hands busied with learning the land, with my eyes on star-filled skies (unpolluted by streetlights), and my belly on the earth sleeping, rolling down hills, and picking myself from unceremonious bike spills other and minor scrapes and incidents than I ever did affixed to screens (though we had a TV, VCR and a hand full of movies).
Wound as I was, there was always plenty of forestry to pull me back in and it is this innate connection to nature that in so many ways has shaped me. In spite of my own rootedness to life in time of extreme stress, loss, or rapid change—anxiety still stalks me and once the nerves begin to unwind, it is not uncommon to be pulled in by the thick blanket of what some call depression.
Where, I wonder sometimes, is the middle way?
It is revealed through practice, ritual, and consistency. There is a growing trend towards stability from both sides of the extreme, what is clinically referred to as: neurological regulation.
There are deep breaths, long exhales, hours spent sitting in the dark leather chair that is the creative center of my little world. There are deep dives and explorations into my psyche and soma with my counselor (a service I myself am honored to provide for others). There are also long conversations with close friends.
We don’t do it alone—find stability, that is. We need each other and nature.
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