Light in the Darkness

There is a story about a buck who loved his horns and hated his feet. But when the hunter came his feet saved him until his horns, caught in a thicket, destroyed him. The story is from Emerson who said, “We’ve all been hurt by a point of pride in our life, while at the same time, we’ve been helped by our weakness, even our character defects.”

I saw Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, ten years ago at Cambridge University in England. He was in the teacher’s lounge between classes. Lou Gehrig’s disease had incapacitated him, but his mind and his wheelchair were state of the art. His assistant tied a bib around his neck for afternoon tea and poured nine cups down him, one after the other. The bib was wide with a deep pocket that caught the tea as in ran down his chin.

He was being interviewed by a reporter from the Manchester Guardian newspaper. He communicated with the help of a machine attached to his keyboard. He didn’t speak in sentences, or even in words. He built the conversation letter-by-letter, like he was laying brick.

I could hear pieces of the interview from where I was sitting. I heard him tell the reporter that he was scatter-brained, undisciplined and at loose-ends before his disease, but as his body grew weaker his focus grew stronger. Once he faced his powerlessness over his disease his hidden resources grew. As if the disease opened a door for him.

This is how it is with my periodic battles with depression. If I don’t fight against it, but, instead, listen to it---even befriend it---I am surprised to find a light in the darkness. It’s not like the searchlights car lots use to lead you into the parking lot. It is more like a candle, or a porch light.

The light is always on, but when we are unraveling we tend to see only darkness. But the light is there. In the darkness.

And sometimes, like with Dr. Hawking, the thing we thought would ruin us turns out to be the very thing that opens the door to a new life.