Turning off the dark

Yesterday with a student, he asked me,

"What if instead of turning on the light,

You could turn off the dark?"

I told him I had thought that before,

because it was true after all.

I have seen my share of darkness,

I have wanted to turn it off

because turning the light on

seemed to be too much. Too hard.

But it was there in the dark that I realized

that darkness, too, can be a friend.

The dark teaches love to ones self.

It is in my own times of darkness when I learned

how much better it is to live in the light,

and how good the light feels to a soul in the dark.

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