Light, Dark, Light Again

Patterns and Possibilities

Patterns

When we were growing up and needing to navigate everything for the first time, having an anticipated pattern in our environment created consistency within the unknown and ever changing world of childhood. Subsequently, this provided a sense of safety. Patterns helped us with predictability and knowing what to expect. Morning hunger cues were met with satiation from our caregivers, providing a routine where breakfast was given upon waking. Band-Aids followed scraped knees. Warm showers followed days of play. If patterns were not present, the world might have felt chaotic and challenging to live in. However, having a modicum of consistency made even the most unpredictable circumstances feel less uncomfortable. Predictability reduces the degree of ambiguity in our lives. Patterns give us hope. They tell us when X happens, we can expect Y will follow. I remember in grade school receiving worksheets with “If ____, then _____” statements to complete. We were being taught to expect patterns from a young age. To trust a sense of reliability in our world.

When the ball dropped in Times Square ringing in the new year where I live, I felt a stark juxtaposition. As we toasted and kissed surrounded by confetti and glitter, I experienced a pit low in my stomach. Maybe you felt it, too.

The unknown 2025 would bring.

After intense grief that first week of November, I lived in pleasurable dissociation. It wasn’t until the calendar page turned to January 1st that I began to feel the tingling simmer of panic underneath my skin. Lately I’ve felt like a surfer gliding on waves these last few weeks, oscillating between anxiety and detachment. If I spend too much time in the water, my mind will float back to shore and camp there for a time. Then something triggering will occur, and I am right back in the cool blue ocean sitting on my pretend surfboard – the reality of life on the beach too far for me to see or know what is happening.

Perhaps you’ve been experiencing something similar.

This past year on my birthday, a friend invited me to see a musician I’d never heard of. She had an extra concert ticket and, being that I did not make any plans that night, I took her up on the offer. The Australian singer was captivating. In the dark and cozy venue that August evening, Angie McMahon’s voice vibrated through the room as her powerful lyrics were palpably felt by the audience. One song in particular caught my attention called, “Making it Through”. The words sinking into me, to be stored, held, and retrieved at a later time when I needed them most:

“I know now, at the end of the ending

That just making it through is the lesson

Just making it through…

I didn't know then

That out of ash and destruction

The ground will grow things…

Rise, fall, rise, life, death, life again

Sky, ground, sky, day, night, day again

Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again”

After the impromptu birthday concert, I listened to the album Light Dark Light Again on repeat. My music fixation eventually faded (as they usually do), but this month it was spontaneously revived. And as I listened to the lyrics once more, I immediately thought about the new administration that took office this week.

In a strange way it was comforting to remember that our world lives in states of patterns. We know how to predict spring because we are in winter. Just as we expected the cold this season because the colors turned in the fall. Nothing lasts forever. The cycle repeats.

Light, Dark, Light Again helped reground me. The songs manifesting within, like a lifeguard waving their arms for me to paddle back to my metaphorical shore.

For those of us that felt a huge sigh of relief four years ago (light) and are now pulling the alarm bell, begging for someone to notice the emergency (dark), may I offer a gentle reminder of patterns (light).

I do not wish to minimize the darkness. It feels bleak.

The heaviness is real. It’s not imagined.

And yet.

Light follows darkness. It always does. The patterns tell us so.

The sun brightens moonlight each day to usher in the morning.

It’s not a matter of if the light returns, but when.

Possibilities

If there is one thing I have taken away from having lived through this administration before, it’s that the next ray of light needs some help getting here. Yes, the pattern will still happen. But how bright and quickly the light comes again depends on us.

This is where the cycle of sun and moon differs from our present circumstances. We do nothing to make the earth turn on its axis. But we can bring the light faster and stronger by building community, banding together, and getting active to protect and speak up for the people who need it the most.

Could things eventually be better if we sat idly and waited? Sure. But it would take a hell of a lot longer. And less people unscathed.

When we pick up a novel, we have every freedom to read the first chapter and flip to the epilogue to find out what happened, skipping the entire rise, fall, and climax. But what would be the purpose of reading the book? We engage with fiction to learn about the characters’ hardships and how they overcame them. A good story shows the process from Point A to Point B. The way the character was changed because of the shit they went through. How the character overcame adversity or fought their internal struggles and came out on the other side – bruised and bent but not broken. Of course, the reader knows Point B exists, but what satisfaction is there if we skip the messy middle to reach the resolution?

Friends, we are in the messy middle.

We are sandwiched between the bookends of light. As we live in this part of the story (darkness), we have a part to play before there is light again.

The morning of November 6th, I stood in my shower and cried. (Wept is probably more accurate.) As the water beat down on my head mixing with the stream of salty tears, I looked up at the swirl texture on my ceiling, the curvy lines a remnant of the 1990s that we never changed after moving in. And for the first time in ten years that I had stood in that shower, I saw the shape of a heart. There it was, existing amongst the squiggles and lines. I had never noticed it before. Maybe in the past when I looked at the designs I might have glanced at it, but didn’t register it as a heart. Somehow there it was, clear and bright. The first thing my eyes were drawn to after sobbing.

I heard a small, soft part speak to me that morning as I looked at the bathroom ceiling. It said, “You can choose what you want to see”. At the time, and what I needed in that moment, was to believe this part was saying that despite the deep grief myself and millions were experiencing, there was still love. Still goodness. That it wasn’t completely over.

Following my cleansing shower cry, I started to see hearts out in the world. Everywhere I looked there they were: in the leaves, smudges on windows, curled in latte foam. I realized that the shapes were always there, I was just now choosing to see them. And each time I was reminded that I can make a conscious choice: Will I dwell on what is terrible? Or can I focus on beauty and goodness?

And when my anger refuses to back down, I pull out a chair for it to sit next to me at the table. I set down plates and silverware and listen to what it wants to share. Then after it has sufficiently felt heard, together we will create a plan, charting out what is within our locus of control. I suspect many more meals with my anger in the next four years. And every time we can go back to the drawing board to make sure there is a way to transition outrage into action; Advocating. Calling. Marching. Connecting.

The inauguration fell on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. The irony too great not to notice. I wonder what percentage of attendees were thinking about MLK Jr.’s famous words: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What percentage of them knows that this period of time is merely a speed bump on a long journey…

That knows whatever policies are ushered in, will never silence the people…

That justice will in fact prevail at the end of the story.

As I write this, sitting in my favorite hotel lobby near our home, Florence and the Machine have begun serenading me to “Dog Days are Over” — This isn’t yet our anthem. But it will be. Just as the light comes after darkness, these days will be over.

We will usher in the light we have so deeply longed for, just like we did before. May we band together, linking arms, remembering that one day we will cross over to the other side, bruised and bent, but never broken.