Light reigns

A note on Daylight Savings Time

Today’s accompanying tune: “Shake it Out” by Florence + The Machine

I used to look forward to the fall each year, the gaining of an hour. Though the evenings crept in and the sun grew lazy, I anxiously awaited the extra sleep, the slower rhythms of the winter as the darkness descended. The crunchy steps among the fallen leaves each morning ephemeral in their satisfaction — soon they’d be swept away in anticipation of soft white blankets covering the otherwise unremarkable suburban landscape. The shortening of days welcomed. I longed for the cold, for the dark, for the mysterious. For the ease and comfort that settled in among the shadows. For the soft hush of the snow. For the layers and the fire and the magic. Back then, it was magical.

Now, it feels as if every season of the last eight years has been touched with darkness. The darkness has threatened to overwhelm, and at times it has succeeded. It has taken with it friends, family members, coworkers, peers. The darkness has refused to abide by any clock except that dreamed up by money-hungry grifters seeking to adjust the opacity only when it best suits them and their goals. The mystery, the magic, is gone. It has become sinister, threatening a version of reality we can only see in our mind’s eye peddled by those with a vested interest in sowing more fear. In the darkness, every noise becomes haunting, every vision threatening. Sleep is merely an escape from the waking nightmare we’ve fallen into, one of our own making.

Gone are the ease and comfort, the stillness, the wintering slumber that leads to joyful growth each spring. Gone are the rights of millions of people, gone are the guardrails. Gone is the trust that spring will come, that the clocks will again spring forward into an abundance of light. Gone is the certainty that the days will lengthen, the sun will return, that science is a source of truth. Gone is the veneration of stillness, of gratitude, of softness. In this darkness, there is no wonder. There is only fear, hate, anger. Darkness of mind so all encompassing as to shroud everything it touches. A darkness that ridicules, mocks, denigrates. One that seeks to abolish any believer in light. Makes others question whether the light they remember, the warmth of the sun, was all in their head. Maybe they imagined it. Maybe they’re misremembering. Maybe it was always like this, the darkness, and they simply refused to look.

The darkness is begging the question, but we have the ability to refuse to answer, to refuse to give it what it wants. To sink into the comfort of night, the rhythm inherent in being alive. To cradle our humanness with softness, to recognize that humanness in others. To see ourselves through the longest night and bring everyone along with us. To see the hate and fear and anger and call it for what it is. To give the darkness a name, one that it deserves but opts to sidestep. To brush aside the future the darkness is selling and insist that the light will come. That the time will run out. Time and time again, we’ve seen it. We know it. We are its champions, its beneficiaries. We are a people of the light. It nourishes us — without it there would be no us. It is dangerous for us to simply abandon it, to abscond our life force simply because the darkness wants us to.

After all, darkness is merely an absence. It is marked only by the actions of something entirely outside of itself — a creature only of others’ making. An absence of light. It creates a void into which the grifters and hucksters throw their hopes, their dreams, their profits. It is not a thing all its own the way light is. The way that the moon is all its own, an illumination of even the most oppressing dark night. The way that the stars paint an ancient tapestry across the universe, telling tales of times when things were so much darker and mapping a path forward. As with the most real of boogeymen, the darkness is simply what you choose to make of it, a figment of the mind warped and prodded into something content with subsisting on an empty diet of fear. In the worst of times, it threatens, it gains power, it thrashes about, striking those unable to move beyond its grasp. To its victims, it is very real. The creature it became real enough to inflict real damage. Only in the light we will be able to see the true extent of its reach.

Those that want you to believe the darkness is dangerous, that is it is futile to resist, that it means only harm, have had a good run. A solid eight years of repackaging darkness’ worst tendencies and selling them to the public with a convenient payment plan and new color scheme. And just like Daylight Savings Time, their time is running out. Their cache of fear and hate and anger is running low. The days are lengthening. The sun will again reach its pinnacle — spring is on the horizon. The cycles of the seasons can return, and the slowness can again be appreciated for what it is instead of what someone else wants it to be. That the softness of the winter, the rebuilding of hibernation, will always give away to a spring full of new growth. That the void can again contain magic. That we instead see the innocuous noises and visions of the darkness as just that instead of something nefarious. That we send the grifters and hucksters scrambling as we expose their deeds in the plain light of day. That we reclaim those rights, those comforts, those futures the darkness took. That we remember our humanity, the humanity of everyone around us, as we head into the warmth of the sun. Another four years of darkness could be a turning point from which we cannot return, and as people of the light, it is our responsibility to ensure that nightmare does not seep into our waking life.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 5. Early voting will continue Sunday, November 3, and Monday, November 4, at existing early voting locations. Make a plan, share it with others, and ask about their plans. For your neighbor, for your daughter, for your coworker, for your friend. For those you don’t know yet and those you never will. Vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Vote for the light.

- Megan