This past Friday, January 30th, my truck broke down on a rural highway, twelve miles from the nearest town. This happened at 10:00 p.m. on a cloudy night, so I couldn’t see what happened; I wouldn’t know until the next morning that I’d cracked a ball joint. The only thing I knew for certain was that I’d heard a loud “bang” from my undercarriage, and suddenly I couldn't keep going in a straight line.
As I said, this happened at 10:00 at night, so it was pitch black outside without my headlights. To my horror, this happened in a cell phone dead zone, so I had no way of reaching roadside assistance, or letting my loved ones know what had happened to me. It was thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and twelve miles from town, so walking wasn’t an option, especially since I wasn’t dressed for the temperatures. I had no choice but to bunk down and wait.
I spent the entire first night in my truck. When it became clear nobody was going to stop, I dug out an emergency blanket and prepared for a night of shallow sleep. I was completely alone. Without a cell signal, I couldn’t talk or text with anybody, but I also couldn’t check social media, listen to music, or do the other electronic distractions Americans have grown accustomed to doing, to stave off boredom and loneliness. It was so dark, I couldn’t even read.
Sometimes I’ve encountered people who question why “darkness,” in holy texts like the Bible or the Buddhist sutras, is associated with evil. I have many reasons why I disagree with this read, particularly since “evil” is a man-made moral concept not found in most early religions; things like violence and death simply exist, alongside love and birth. But it’s true, these texts consistently consider “darkness” humanity’s greatest moral shortcoming.
I’ve explained this construction away by suggesting that, in days before cheap electric light, getting trapped away from home after nightfall was treacherous. Without light, humans are vulnerable to predators, bandits, or even pitfalls of terrain, simply because we cannot see. Darkness, to low-tech humanity, signifies one’s complete helplessness before a world that’s generally fair to populations, but blind to the needs of individuals.
Yet here I found myself in actual darkness. Yes, I could imagine coyotes outside my truck, possibly inches from my sleeping body. Yes, I felt helpless, knowing mortality is a thin shell protecting me from something completely unknown. But that night, I felt something besides fear: I felt the keen awareness of myself. I was alone. I had literally nothing but my thoughts to defend against the yawning void of nothingness, not outside, but within.
Our modern society provides copious distractions to prevent humans having to face ourselves. Television, the great diversion of recent generations, has given way to the Internet, with its constant streaming on-demand amusements, custom calibrated to ensure we never have to encounter ideas or entertainments we find particularly dangerous. When I grow bored of my smartphone or computer, I switch to books and music. I’m constantly surrounded by anything that prevents me having to look inward.
Darkness robs me of that. Unable to read, scroll, or otherwise make the time go away, I sat in my hermetically sealed cab, listening to the wind through some farmer’s corn stubble, and realized I was, for the first time in a long time, completely alone with myself. I had to take stock of recent decisions, something most of us avoid doing, and realize where life has brought me, o rather, where I’ve brought myself.
No wonder so many religious practices, like Buddhist meditation of Christian centering prayer, involve sitting still and doing nothing. The world provides constant outside stimuli to prevent us being completely in the moment. Even with friends, we mostly talk about what we’ve done recently, or our future plans; even among my oldest, closest friends, I seldom exist entirely in the present. We humans do anything to avoid existing as we are, and facing present reality.
We don’t fear darkness because we can’t see predators (though that matters, too). We fear darkness because light gives us constant stimuli to occlude our thoughts, permitting us to flee from our souls. The angels came to the shepherds by night, and Gabriel to Mohammed in a shadowed cave, because darkness ensures we have nothing to look at but the truth. And we know, without having to analyze, that truth is something we humans avoid.
See also: Fear of Darkness: Part Two and Fear of Darkness: Part Three
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