A Light in the Darkness

Those who know me well, know that when I come across a book or article I find really inspirational, I want to share it with all my favorite people. That can be a good thing. Taken to an extreme, you can even make a career of it - just look at Oprah.  

Other times though, due to things outside my control - like the timing and mind state of the person I'm sharing with - it's not always what the moment calls for. And over time I've started being more mindful of when, how and with whom I share things. I ask myself, "Is this really something that is going to help someone else? Or is it just an inside joke that resonates with me?"

Well, today I'm feeling really pulled to share something. It's an excerpt from an Elephant Journal article, "Finding Power in Powerlessness," written by my friend, Mia Hetenyi, who I met back in 2012. Over the past few months her posts have been coming up in my feed as she began writing prolifically on topics I have been pondering and writing a lot about myself. This recent one really hit home and hope it resonate with you too. 

People on social media preach all the time about not being afraid, not being a victim, not giving in to fear-based thinking, that no one is ever truly helpless. [Fear is] pitched as a false narrative or negative belief.

What this does is shame valid, honest experiences and reactions to war, trauma, and loss. It creates more tension, not less fear. There are things in this life that we simply do not have control over. We are human; we are not omnipotent.

It’s okay to feel scared...It’s natural to question where there is goodness in the world, if there really is a loving God who is helping us all in this life...Questioning one’s beliefs is a natural progression of processing and metabolizing grief connected to these experiences.

There is power in feeling powerless, a deep help available inside a sense of feeling helpless.

We always, always land in a place of reassessing what matters the most to us when we admit we don’t know, feel scared, don’t know what to do, or feel powerless. Much like rock bottom is filled with a lot of fertile soil.

​I've been finding it reassuring that Mia's essays often call out the rampant spiritual and emotional bypassing in our society, which unfortunately made its way insidiously into the self-help movement under the guise of “being high vibe.” It is one of the themes I have been wrestling with a lot these days myself. It feel feels like I've come full circle to that time in 2012, around the time I first met her, when I simultaneously got more focused on my healing journey, while also moving further away from myself by denying the darkness and trying so much to "be in the light". It's as if my desire for light led me further and further into the darkness. 

​So in the vein of the title of my friend's article, maybe this is the year we can find light in the darkness. And I don't mean finding some silver lining or "being positive" in the midst of chaos to try to make a bad thing feel better. I mean finding the light that never dies, that goes beyond words, that perhaps can only be found by delving deep into the unknown, into utter darkness, and facing the underbelly of the human experience head on, but this time making it through to the other side with a much greater strength and understanding. Victor Frankl, in his famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning," expresses a profound perspective on this, a realization he had while being marched to a concentration camp in World War II.

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his suffering in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, understand the words, "the angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

Hoping this has brought some sort of clarity or comfort in these dark times. 

Amanda Ianthe | Drawn to Life