Darkness, again.

Today I have been listening to a podcast about darkness. Not the bad or scary darkness but the darkness we need to discover the hidden lights. Today we live in a world, where 80% of the people in Europe or North America never meet real darkness. This means that to them, or rather us, the night time sky with its stars and constellations is something we are no longer able to see. We are “blinded by the light” and thus unable to experience and be impressed by both our own place in the Universe and beauty of what lies beyond us.

I have written about this previously in a blog post two years ago, but today’s podcast listening made it important to reiterate why darkness is important:

"Darkness is not bad. Sometimes we shy away from the darkness, turning on so many lights that we blind ourselves, loos the ability to se the details, the small changes at dusk and dawn. We need darkness as a contrast to the light. And we need stillness, darkness and silence to slow down long enough to reflect on what we are doing and where we are going. “Finding more time to do absolutely nothing is perhaps exactly what we all need". Looking at sky and sea as the sun is setting is a great way of doing very little."

And these two pictures clearly show that too much light can really hide what we want to see.