Glorious Light, Delicious Dark

If you want to give a thought to how much our reality is shaped by our perception, give a thought to light and dark.

One of the beautiful things about Christmas and the celebrations surrounding it, are those long, dark nights that allow us the joy of twinkly Xmas lights, and burning logs by the fire, not to mention scurrying along cold dark streets and looking in at people’s windows, getting a view and feeling of the warmth of human life. Dickens was into that sort of thing, and so am I. It’s a friendly, loving way to see everyday December in all its cosiness.

Dark and cold can’t exist without light and heat, and visa versa – that’s one of the principles of The Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Philosophy.  So that when we sit by a living fire on a winter night, we get an echo and taste of the heat of summer, glowing in the embers. Both are there.

It’s the very spirit of cold and darkness that lets us revere warmth and light, whilst in the glaring heat and searing light of a hot Southern summer we long for the shade; the houses of the Mediterranean respect this principle, from the tiles on the floor, to the shutters on the windows.

As for us, we are beings incorporating both glorious light, and delicious darkness.

Whilst on the subject of perception… there’s a different side to this journey into seasonal light and darkness, a side that’s been taken over by those members of the establishment who step blithely from the warmth of a large car into an official building, and back again, oblivious to the temperature and the time of day. These are the ones who represent the worst facet of our government, the power companies and their shareholders who rub their hands in glee at the cold winter, insensible to the poor and the vulnerable sitting by a single bar of an electric fire, simply trying to survive. Those that privatised the power sources have no idea about the golden rule – that one should treat others as one would like to be treated oneself. As it stands privatisation of gas and electricity is officially and commercially sanctioned greed, and right now it’s making Scrooge look as fluffy and harmless as Tinkerbell.

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