I like to think that I am reasonably self-aware.
I like to think that I have this aspect of me, like a witness, that judges and ascertains whether or not my behaviour and speech is appropriate. On occasion, it can even influence my feelings.
I like to think that I have a moderately good quantity of self-control.
In many situations, this is the case.
But there are lacunae.
I recall a therapist forcing me to accept that I was, in fact, grieving over lost love. Forcing me to see that if I could accept that the pain was that pain then I could process it. Process it! Like in a blender.
In a way, I did know that that that loss made me sad. But in another way I shoved it in a dark place and left it there, bound and gagged and bleeding.
There are times when I cannot see outside my mood and my current beliefs. When reality shrinks to just one small aspect of the landscape of life or personality or consciousness.
This is like how we as humans are stuck in our individual boxes, how we as a species are stuck inside our umwelt.
I don't know how you shine light on the dark places. I guess Freud thought he knew. I guess that therapist lit a match in one part of my psyche. But there is so much darkness and the matches cast but little light and fade out so quickly.
Maybe, if there is a meaning to life, and I think that I have thought this before, in fact, I know that I have, then that meaning is to try to light up as many corners as possible. Within oneself and in some sense beyond. Ah! Enlightenment!
What I thought before was, and I think I have written a little about this, was that Shakespeare's lantern shone on the relationship of the father and the daughter - as the daughter brings grace and innocence and forgiveness and compassion back into a world-weary heart. That Spenser saw the dance of the maidens in the Faerie Queene as some image that, in whatever way, cast its brilliance on his values or his beliefs. That Sidney found in writing complex characters in the New Arcadia that good and evil are not dichotomised but exist in the soul of every person and that motivations and mind can be mixed and contradictory.
Me, the light I see is, ironically, the dark places that I do not see.
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