my jogging diary 1…... sitting in the dark

I sometimes wish I could record the conversations in my head that happen on my trail runs or walks.

Before you get too excited, no my trail run is a slow process, I have years of body neglect to catch up on but I’m loving every moment…… well sometimes through some tears 😭. The feeling of freedom and movement of energy, however, trumps any challenging moments.

my jogging diary is my attempt to write down some of the thoughts and concepts I have internal conversations about while out in nature. It helps me reflect and process what im going through and might mean something for someone else one day.

Learning to sit in the dark….

Life is not always light and rosy.

I have dark moments, those I don’t want to talk about because I feel so much shame for having them.

Shame is such a tricky thing, most of the time I don’t even realise that I am experiencing shame. According to Brené Brown, a researcher at the University of Houston and brilliant writer, shame is an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. It's an emotion that affects all of us and profoundly shapes the way we interact in the world.”

I lived with shame, this intense experience of being unworthy of love and belonging for a very long time. It put me in a constant flight or fight mode. I just did not know what I was fighting against or what I was running away from.

Only when I found myself in complete darkness, when I was frozen in fear to a point that I could not fight or run anymore, did darkness start to make way for light.

I grew up understanding that darkness is bad, that it’s something to be afraid of, that “monsters hide in the dark”. I have been so afraid of the dark that going out at night always took huge amounts of courage and determination.

It is true that many bad things happen in the dark, but honestly just as many bad things happen in the light.

I am slowly learning a new meaning for the existence of darkness. If we look at nature, darkness has a pretty important role. Plants, shrubs and trees use sunlight for photosynthesis during the daytime, but at night they need darkness to regenerate a key compound - phytochrome. Phytochromes control many aspects of plant development. They regulate the germination of seeds, the synthesis of chlorophyll, the elongation of seedlings, the size, shape and number and movement of leaves and the timing of flowering in adult plants.

Another analogy that comes to mind is that darkness is to light what silence is to music. Without the silences between the notes, music will just be noise. Musical notes needs the silences to give the notes time to breathe and have meaning.

These thoughts draws my attention to the ancient Yin Yang sign and the saying that without darkness there is no light and without light there is no darkness. The Chinese philosophical concept describes how opposing forces may actually be complementary, interconnected and interdependent.

Well, my perception of darkness is shifting. I don’t see it the way I used to. I am no longer afraid of the dark, as I now realise that its as important as the light.

When we are going through dark moments in life and we can learn not to hide or run away from it. Not to see it as a punishment or some form of corrective conditioning. We can learn to embrace it as that which brings balance, a time to rest, breathe and allow it to bring forth growth.

I’m learning to sit in the dark. Just sit, be still and rest. Allowing myself the time that life has forced me to take. As I sit in the dark I see the light starting to appear. I don’t have to keep walking or start running, I must just sit. My eyes adjust to the light in darkness and I see that the darkness is there to slow me down, to give me an opportunity to refocus my eyes on what really matters.