I eagerly await the shortest — the darkest — day of the year, every year. Winter may only be beginning in late December but my mind clamps onto those daily two to three extra minutes of daylight that begin after winter solstice. Just as the cold starts in earnest, the light stubbornly pushes back.
Identifying the darkest day in 2020 may be more figurative — and personal — for many this year. Painfully easy for some. Cruelly difficult for others.
The pandemic has added to other plagues: of loneliness, paranoia, resentment. Ignorance. Sometimes it feels everything this year has been a plague.
One thing we know is our elegant, fragile bodies are temporary. Almost certainly, so too is our plague of this amazing celestial speck we live on.
We fear darkness because it reminds us of how little we know. This year darkness stalks us and feels deeper. It threatens to drown us in our ignorance and foolishness. It is broader and deeper than we can imagine. Instead of recognizing our ignorance and swimming against it so many —overwhelmed, tired, afraid — flail against it, hoping for rescue.
But the only possible rescue will come from ourselves. If we flail we drown, and drown others with us. No one can swim for you. To rescue ourselves we must swim, committing our faith, patience, and coordination to the effort. It is not a race, it’s a challenge of will and endurance.
This willful and defeated president has stamina only in service of his ego and greed. He flaunts his gluttony and lust. He is content in his voluminous ignorance of history and the mechanics, and art, of governing. In darkness he applies his power only to his own indulgence. Low-hanging fruit is the limit of his reach and imagination. His internment will be a milepost in our nation’s repentance.
In the meantime, pulling ourselves out of our national darkness requires our collective will and stamina. With the slow inexorability of the Earth’s orbit of the sun we must relentlessly enlighten ourselves minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
With patience we must seek to understand. With understanding we can rebuild a nation of responsibility, justice and opportunity. Let winter solstice be the end of 2020’s darkness.
Gavin Layton
Snohomish
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