Fact. Fantasy. Reality. In all things, there is darkness, and there is light. And even in those, there must be balance.
Something interesting happened the other day while I was watching an episode of the current incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. Now, keep in mind that I am a huge fan of the original series. It had the magic that was so wonderful, the magic that made it special. Today’s series is grittier, more realistic. It has the dysfunctional families that we see so much of today. It has a group of humans trying to survive against all odds, and not even thinking that they can. It has none of the feelings and ideals set by the original series. In the original, the characters believed that there was hope in their flight from extinction. They were optimistic.
Each series was written for the times that we live in. The original, which premiered (wow) almost 30 years ago was optimistic, heroic. It was light winning against the darkness. The current series is very realistic in terms of human feelings and today’s society where you don’t know if the darkness will swallow you or not. It is very reality based. And I that is what I realized is the reason I don’t like it much. I watch it, and it is entertaining, but the magic is gone.
You see, I feel that there is already too much reality. The world we live in and work in is real. The last thing I want to see is reality when I go home and put on the TV. I see reality all day long. What I want to do is escape. I want to see the good guys win.
There are all too many offerings of reality TV where we get to see inside people’s lives, and what makes them be what they are. We see series like Survivor where it seems that to become ‘Number 1’, you need to be good at lying, conniving, and manipulating people. I think I would rather finish last.
Thanks to TV now, we can see every little thing that goes wrong on the planet in minutes. What we see mostly is darkness. We see reports on a war that seems to have no conclusion, and no hope of resolution. We see sadness as good people die because they are hounded by others who will do anything to feed our curiosity. We see terrorist attacks that kill thousands. And we see disasters that destroy a city. Basically, we see darkness moving in.
I have actually stopped following the news as closely as I used to. All too often I would see where government makes bad decisions that ruin people’s lives, or insurance and drug companies control our health, large companies letting older workers go to save a few dollars. It all made me angry and despondent. But those are signs of darkness as well.
You see, darkness moves in large sweeping motions. We see it in disasters. We see it in wars. We see it in any situation where hope is taken away by someone bigger and more powerful. We seem to be faced with too many battles that can’t be won because we don’t have the strength, numbers, or resources to fight. We’re faced with darkness moving its hand across our paths.
While darkness moves in big bold motions, light moves in tiny, sometimes unnoticeable steps. It exists in one person helping another. It is present in a kind word. We see it in hope, in optimism. We see it in living a life and knowing that some day things will get better, no matter what challenges are thrown in our way.
This is why I like the old Battlestar Galactica, and the original Star Trek, because they had hope. They believed that anything can happen, and that eventually light would win over the darkness. This is why I like Star Wars (at least the original trilogy). It showed that one person using the energies around him could defeat the greatest evil there was, to bring things into balance. There was a point where Luke was despondent, and a time where he actually flirted with the dark side in trying to defeat the evil in Darth Vader. But, the light won. This is why I like the older fantasies.
Light exists in small things. You could look at it as a series of candles. Darkness is in big things, almost like a blanket covering things. But what we have to realize is that when you put a bunch of candles together, they create a really bright light.
While there are many things happening in this world that are dark, and show darkness spreading, we need to know that there are many candles. In fact, there is a candle in each of us. The key is to keep that candle burning, and not let it get snuffed out in the darkness. We do this by keeping hope alive, by being optimistic. We need to know that eventually, that no matter what happens, no matter what challenges we face, things will be better.
In doing this, we will keep out candle burning. We don’t need to be heroes (although being optimistic can be considered heroic). We don’t need to take a light saber and go off to smash the dark evil. We just need to live our lives, and hope. That will keep the candle burning. And eventually, our light will combine with the light in others, and that will wash away the darkness.
For now, we need balance. We need to balance the light and dark within each of us. We need to keep the flame of hope lit, and let it spread through our thoughts and actions even if all we do is pass on a kind word now and then. That is how hope spreads. That is how light grows. One small step at a time.
Take some steps. Spread the light. Soon, there will be no darkness.