Over the weekend, the sun made its first appearance of the new year. Nine days in, and we finally got a glimpse of that bright winter light. A day later, it was blue skies for an hour or two. Today, the gray has melted into a bubbly blue-and-white sky and I feel like it’s my duty to plop myself next to a window and bask in a sliver of sunlight.
If January were a color, it would be gray. Every day gray, every year gray. It’s no great surprise, but this year, being stuck in the house day after day surrounded by gray and the occasional dull brown, the calendar flipped and I started counting the days of no sunlight, eight in all.
Sometimes, when I’m really down about it, I remember those years we lived in Alabama where, as Lynyrd Skynyrd sings, “the skies are so blue.” When we first moved there, it didn’t take me long to realize how blue the sky really was, having spent more than two decades in a sometimes-sunless gloom. Now, I miss those blue skies and their predictability, especially this time of year.
Winter is filled with dark months, but that’s not the same as gray. Gray can be bright and, if you’re lucky enough to have a blanket of clean, white snow, a cloudy day can be like living inside a reflector.
It’s not all bad. It’s also not all darkness.
I’ve been thinking about darkness a lot this week, as I work through Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark with an online book club. Though the dichotomy of light and dark is not lost on me, I’ve never spent much time considering the darkness, spiritual or otherwise.
I’ve always felt comfortable with the dark—comfortable in physical darkness and with the darker parts of myself—so comfortable, in fact, that I often run toward the darkness rather than away from it. When I think about light or the light within me, I try my best to believe it’s there. But I doubt. The darkness is like an old friend. The light can feel at times foreign and awkward, too exposing, artificial.
In the last decade, as I’ve gotten more and more into photography, I’ve learned about all types of light: backlight, side light, diffused light, harsh light. My style tends to be shooting straight into the sun as it lowers toward the horizon. I’ve been much less interested in working with less-than-ideal lighting conditions.
For a while, I was obsessive about checking the weather, angling for days where I knew sunshine would be abundant so I could shoot my camera during golden hour. The more I learned about the light, the more I clamored for bold sunshine. It made me feel alive, dazzling and glittery. And what I wanted more than anything was to feel alive.
It grew into an obsession with light that rapidly turned unhealthy. I’d only shoot my camera if it was sunny and ideal, overlooking the qualities of not-so-sunny light or even the play within shadow. I simply stopped trying to work with what was, favoring only what seemed perfect.
It was sunshine or bust.
What started to happen, though, was all that exhaustive looking for sunlight was wearing me out. Weary, I put my camera away.
The truth is, most days are just not ideal. Most days are ordinary with ordinary weather, muddling through mundane tasks. Of course, we should stop and acknowledge the sunlight, especially if it’s been far too long since we’ve seen it. But the rest of the time, covered in clouds or heavy with snow—all of that matters too.
The early sunsets and lingering nights. The changing of the seasons. Darkness, light. It all matters.
Not just outside us, but within us.
It’s a paradox that light is within me as much as the darkness, that we are all a mixture of light and dark, blue skies and cloudy afternoons. Darkness isn’t a bad thing—it’s a necessary thing, the twin sister of light, a counterweight that balances us. As much as light, it keeps us alive.
Darkness, light. It all matters.
We are both. We need both.
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