How Dark is Dark

"How dark is dark" was a fortune cookie one of my friends Jeremy opened a few years back. It was at a birthday party with a few other friends. It made us all laugh, and it challenged our conceptions of words, thoughts, and ... darkness. The philosophy of darkness is a weird thing.  We tend to think of darkness like a bad, looming thing. That we have to fight it, be against it, or run away from it. Unless we face it, acknowledge it, and question it, it will tend to have a hold on us (me) and we'll see it as 'other'. I have darkness within me. Unless I confront it, it'll cause me to feel like I'm not whole; like I'm not good enough because I have this within me.  But that's not true , and it's not helpful .  I, like everyone, am not a bad person, but I have bad things inside. No one is inherently bad, we just have "bad", and easily avoid it. Running away, it creates more and more division. There's more space between myself and

Along the way, I decided to express myself. It's not very easy for me, and I've decided now is when I'd like to do it, using as many conjunctions as possible. I'm interested in expressing the deeper feelings and thoughts that I have bottled up, and, knowing that I'm an expert of avoiding and pretending, need to find someway to let them out. Here and now. How Dark is Dark? I hope to use and abuse my life's experiences to bring clarity to issues in our daily lives:  hurt relationships overwhelming addictions finding reason (and working through different philosophies) pursuing purpose living with and without faith confronting fears learning to love loving to hate living with anger avoiding racism embracing politics accepting differences I'm no expert, but I hope to be as honest as I can, while trying not to get lost in the "words" of it. Words are the current medium, but they're the finger pointing to reality, not reality itself