Nano blog 4: Darkness is optimism and Light is pessimism
It is a common practice to correlate, link or connect light with optimism and darkness with pessimism. This analogy is common across multiple mediums including books, stories, poems and movies. The underlying belief or idea behind these assumptions, according to me, is related to the way a human being perceives darkness and light. I have a theory to share which tries to explain this association. I have also tried to explain my understanding of how this belief must have established.
Take a look at our universe. What can you see? You can see planets, stars, galaxies and other celestial objects (things which are incomprehensible to a layman like me). And there is also one peculiar thing in our universe which is of prime importance to me. As a matter of fact, it is also omnipresent and is called darkness.
I say it is omnipresent because unlike light, it does not have a source. You cannot 'create' darkness, it is just there. But, if you want light you need something, some kind of source, to generate light. This is true about the smallest source of light like a torch to the biggest source of light i.e. a star. Both torch and star, have a fixed life and once they end their lives, the light extinguishes automatically. So basically the existence of light depends on a source but darkness can exist without any source. You can kill the light but darkness is unkillable. This is because when there is light, darkness appears to die but once the light lives through its life, the darkness reappears. This is why darkness is eternal.
And I believe hope, as a fundamental human instinct, is also eternal. This is because unless some extreme adversity strikes us, we continue to be hopeful. I think a person is inherently optimistic unless some serious danger arises in his/her life. A human being tends to be optimistic and hopeful in a normal course of time. His/her hope may disappear for a while due to unforeseen circumstances but this very hope reappears when the adversity is gone. These features of hope are very similar to the those of darkness as discussed above.
So if you see, optimism and pessimism are more analogous with darkness and light, respectively. I am not sure whether this explanation would find an echo with the litterateur and artist fraternity but this is what my logical mind has been telling me for the last 6 years now!
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