The Dark is Not Scary
June 19, 2018
You take a deep breathe as you turn off the lights in your room. The sprint to your bed that follows to beat the unknown lurking in the dark, it being ready to grab you and pull you into the darkness.
Ideally, it is dark for 12 hours of the day and light for the other half. We use this solar cycle to our advantage, going to sleep while it’s dark and going through the day in the light. However, even the bedtime abiding citizens of the world are affected by light pollution, which gives us brighter skies in the later p.m. hours.
The New York Audubon Society estimates that 10,000 migratory birds collide with skyscrapers and high-rises each year, injuring and killing these creatures. This is just one of the many animals affected by the man made, artificial living that we have continued to advance over the years.
Regardless of how cool kids can stay up until ridiculous hours at night, we as humans need the average eight hours of rest to regain energy and organize our thoughts while we sleep. Sleep is also incredibly important for your physical health as well. While you sleep, your heart and blood vessels repair themselves. This is important because you enable your body to take a break and instead of constantly working yourself, you have the ability to recharge.
Given, there is a lot we do not know about the darkness. Symbolizing the unknown, we fear what we cannot see and touch. Children, with growing imaginations and ongoing fears of the world see the dark as something unknown, something that COULD be harmful. Given that children are also prone to being dependent on another adult to protect them, grow to fear the dark and what it might hold. It takes years to realize that the closet you always feared as a child, does not in fact hold the monsters of your nightmares, no, it’s just the hideous dress you’ve hidden from the world.
Fear of the unknown is self explanatory, fear of something that helps you, can be detrimental. They say you only appreciate something once you’ve lost it, and at the rate we are progressing, our nighttime will be gone and the darkness that kept our eyes closed as we sleep will be as light as the day.
The Dark is Scary
It’s 11:30 you’ve just come home from a horror movie with your friends. You’re sitting in the dark trying to go to sleep but then your thoughts take over. That monster is crawling up beside you as you eyes are shut slowly perring towards you, just watching. You jump out of bed turn to you lamp next to you as you shake to quickly turn on the lamp. It turns on and you see nothing. You catch your breath turn off the lights again and the process starts all over again.
The dark is quite scary. It’s an unknown when you think about it. When you can’t see you lose one of your senses. Once that happens it causes others to enhance. Your thoughts take over and you begin to just let your mind take over in the place of being incapable to see.
It’s a common to be afraid of the dark. It’s very common between children and adults.
“It’s the fear of what the darkness masks. The dark leaves us vulnerable and exposed, unable to spot any threats that may be lurking nearby” (Romm).
Personally, I am afraid of the dark. It’s the idea of not knowing what’s out there. It causes my mind to wonder places that I don’t like it to. It’s the idea of not knowing what is out there is horrifying.
Overall it’s okay to be afraid. You’re not a “baby” for not being afraid. It’s life, at one point or another the dark probably did scare you. Just one point in your life, the unknowing might’ve shooken you to your core; given you the chills up and down your spine; the shakes that just wouldn’t disappear. Its the dark, you honestly don’t know.