Reframing Your Relationship With Darkness
There is so much horror in our world. And yet, we’ve learned to adapt to it—even find comfort in it.
As our society continues to extend its horrors by pushing us to not only befriend, but to become them—we further integrate suffering into our lives without us truly realizing it.
This is because we are praised for it. We are praised for becoming another puppet of mass suffering.
I mean, look at the classic guide to life:
Go to school, get a job, start a family you'll hardly ever see, and work until you're no longer useful to the system—right before you've reached your deathbed.
There are too many versions of this guide—all terrible and all belonging under the same disguise of "how to live satisfactorily."
When it's really as if we have been given a guide to everlasting melancholy. Perhaps, one that goes like this:
A Guide to Everlasting Melancholy
Open your eyes to the dawn of the day
and remind yourself that change is not on its way.
Confirm your loneliness by checking your phone
and act surprised at how quickly hope turns to stone.
Drag yourself to the kitchen
and feel the cold ground sting at your feet.
Brew that bitter, shitty coffee you call breakfast
because your stomach hurts too much to eat.
Take a long shower and overanalyze every interaction of the past.
Revisit every bad thing that has happened to you until it holds you in its grasp.
Turn the water hotter, as if the warmth could imitate a hug.
Then laugh it off, ending it with a hollow, shameful shrug.
Throw on the clothes you wear so often they’ve stopped feeling new.
Tear apart the stranger in the mirror—dissecting each flaw before realizing they are you.
Get into the car and drive to your misery—or job, whatever you choose to call it.
Another day spent choosing survival over yourself, all for the sake of your wallet.
Replace the radio’s songs with the old voicemails they once left.
Let their empty words fill the silence, and leave you bereft.
Force each muscle in your face to shape something close to a smile.
Make small talk, repeating that same script you’ve been using for a while.
Do everything mediocrely and stalk the stubborn clock.
Work until the seconds lose their meaning and the day continues its mock.
Come back home and fall into your bed.
Distract yourself until the tears begin to shed.
Cry and cry until there’s nothing left inside.
Lick the tears that have nowhere else left to bide.
Feel the burn of your salt-soaked cheeks—
what remains of your sadness in long, wet streaks.
Close your swollen, drying eyes tight.
Revisit the troubles of your day before succumbing to another dreamless night.
Think of the friend who waits for you tomorrow—
the sadness that promises to make a sanctuary of your sorrow.
Does this feel familiar?
Now, I'm not going to give you a pep talk, nor a repetitive quote. I'm not going to list a bunch of reasons for why you should be happy. Or, even worse—convince you that there is a way to achieve everlasting happiness.
Because everlasting happiness does not exist. It is irrevocably unattainable.
Though, what I will give you is a guide to peace.
Embrace the Ebbs and Flows
Peace begins once you choose to understand that life is not something linear, nor supposed to be.
It is like a river—an ever-changing stream flowing over jagged rocks and debris all while belonging to a vast sea.
They consist of tragedy, tribulation, and catastrophe, but also love, bliss, and serenity.
Understand that these polarities will forever co-exist.
There is no fighting it, no controlling it, or even avoiding it.
In trying to, you're choosing to fight a battle that you will always end up losing. And, once you've had enough of losing, you will likely surrender by finding comfort in what chaos remains.
So, what can you do when you can't fight, can't avoid, and cannot surrender?
What you can do is realize that there was never a battle to begin with.
And once you see that—you can finally let yourself move with life, instead of against it.
You can finally give yourself the chance to really embrace the ebbs and flows.
Observe, Don't Absorb
I am talking about embracing the suffering and the darkness just as you would embrace the love and light.
And how do we do that?
Well, you can start by practicing detachment.
Detach yourself from the expectations of a world without suffering. Or, in other words—the expectations to live in a world of light without ever knowing the darkness.
Good and evil, lightness and darkness, sun and moon—these cannot exist without one another.
Both sides exist because they have to—it's simply another law of the universe, called the law of polarity.
Now, I'm not suggesting for you to become numb to negativity. And I'm definitely not suggesting that you should turn your head away from it, nor find unconscious comfort in it.
But rather, to consciously observe, accept, and experience it—without always absorbing it.
Because once you absorb it, you become it. Then, you won't just be experiencing the darkness—you’ll start to live inside it.
Instead, allow yourself to experience it and to learn from it without identifying with it.
This is the power of observing, and not absorbing.
Control is an Illusion
As you can see, there is a pattern that has begun to emerge:
not of control—but of letting go.
And that’s what unsettles people the most.
So tell me—
what’s truly more frightening?
Living under the illusion that you are in control, or accepting that you never were?
I'll let you be the one to decide.
Because the more you try to control what comes next, the more you become consumed by it—chasing certainty that will never arrive.
And before you realize it, you’re no longer living—only anticipating.
Understand this:
you exist within something far greater than yourself—a universe that moves by its own laws.
Not by your will. Not by your fear. And never by your need for control.
And whether you resist that truth or accept it—it all continues either way.
The Power of Gratitude
This is the part where you discover your own way to keep an open heart in this erratic world.
One place to start is through one of the most overlooked practices:
gratitude.
It's something each of us is capable of.
Not because it's always easy—but because it's available.
Now, gratitude doesn’t erase suffering. And it doesn’t make darkness disappear.
But it does change the way you view it.
To look at darkness with the willingness to still find meaning within it—that is power.
To reach a point where you can look back and say:
“That hurt me. And it taught me something I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.”
That’s where gratitude becomes real. And that is where you find peace.
Throughout my life, I’ve found myself returning to the same realization:
the experiences that hurt the most are often the ones that teach the most.
It's not that I absorbed those experiences—but I refused to let them be meaningless.
And because of that, I am grateful for every bad thing that has happened to me.
They taught me what comfort never could.
I wouldn't have the knowledge that I have today. And I wouldn't even be writing this right now if it weren't for them.
Now, if there is anything to take from this, let it be this:
you are not here to control life—but to experience it.
To experience both the light and the darkness without turning away from either.
You cannot escape suffering, and you cannot control it.
But you can choose how you meet it.
