Being in the Dark
As we head towards the Winter solstice on the 21st (in the UK), I am going to post a couple of letters about darkness and how we can have a different perspective on the longer days. For the last couple of years I have tried to embrace the cold and darkness of winter instead of trying to fight it. Fighting it is exhausting and depressing. Really, all I was trying to do was pretend that winter wasn’t happening which made for a very long few months. It doesn’t change that it’s dark and grey outside but my energy expended in this futile way of pretending can be better used.
One way I do this it to try and embrace the longer darker days, using them to change my routines. Longer nights do have an effect on us that is natural. Other writers have pondered how night affects us.
Tiffany Francis-Baker wrote in ‘Dark Skies” about something in us that “revolts against darkness”, and this may add to the desire to add light to the darkness wherever we go. But she also observes going out and having nature to herself at night time, savouring the “sounds and smells of the darkness”, she notes that there are things there for nature and outdoor lovers that might be missed during the daylight ours.
Jeanette Winterson, in her glorious article from 2009 entitled “Darkness”, writes “we now live in a fast-moving, fully lit world where night still happens, but is optional to experience. Our 24/7 culture has phased out the night. In fact we treat the night like failed daylight. Yet slowness and silence – the different rhythm of the night – are a necessary correction to the day.”
Winterson is talking here about how we have tried to make night into day - but our psyche is not fooled. Simply pretending that night is day is bad for us.
Winterson goes on to observe: “We are seasonal creatures – the over-ride button is scarcely 100 years old. Give the body back its seasons and the mind is saner.” I think this is really true, and it was partly my rationale for trying to live through winter in a different way. Winterson just crystallised what my thinking was trying to get to.
In hunter-gatherer times we would have stopped hunting and gathering at dusk. The night time was a time to gather round the fire, talk, be quiet, stir pots. Have a respite from activity before the next dawn. Sounds carried further so it was easier to judge safety - or a need for wariness. Perhaps human perception changed because of the night.
Our brains need darkness to prepare for sleep, and some sleeping problems happen because we have disrupted this natural process. We are meant to feel more tired in winter, and meant to rest more. This is easy to say in our modern busy lives. We might think, how can we just stop and rest when our commitments carry on? Perhaps there is room for a small tweak here and there, maybe the end of term can signal a shift in how busy we need to be. Do we really need to do all of those things in the next month or so?
I will quote more from Winterson in the next newsletter as it is such a beautiful essay - but you can find it here in full:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/31/jeanette-winterson-night-guide