Look at the Bright Side

I have a dark side, and I’m utterly ignorant of it. It would appear I’m not the only one. Remember what happened to Ellen when the world found out she has a dark side?

There's a bright and dark side to everything. Animals are in full acceptance of their dark side. Life’s opportunities and experiences have a dark and bright side. Even that which we refer to as God has a dark and light side.

Humans tend to accept the parts of themselves that are socially acceptable, and suppress the rest. Perhaps a connection could be made in the suppression of our own dark side and not fully accepting the dark side of everything else. We project out into the world that which is within us.

A common theme is to resist love because of its bad side. Heartbreak is traumatizing. Another common one is opportunities regarding work. Jobs bring financial stability and fulfillment, but they also bring change and change is uncomfortable.

Because of the resistance, the dark side is thought of as bad or negative. Nothing is necessarily bad or good. It is what it is. Every experience teaches us something. It’s the emotion attached to the experience that makes us think of the experience as good or bad. If an experience puts us into a low-vibe, it is considered bad. If an experience puts us into a high-vibe, it is considered good.

The good and bad exists in every life situation. It’s my decision how I go forth in life, and it now comes down to making decisions that are not rooted in fear. Is the good worth putting up with or risking the bad?

I resisted the bad side so much that I had been unknowingly living in fear of it because resistance to the bad side leads to fear-based thinking, which leads to fear-based decisions. I closed myself off to opportunities because of their bad sides. Ideas that popped into my head never got the opportunity to be acted upon.

This has lead to a comfortable, but stagnant life. I thought I was being smart and realistic by playing it safe. I was staying away from the bad side. The only way to really know how an experience will unfold is to let it happen. What is life, if not a series of decisions?

I worked at the same job for years because I was comfortable. Eventually, the boredom was so overwhelming that I quit with no backup plan.

I have pushed away love connections for fear of getting hurt. My years of single-hood are of my own volition. Perhaps I did avoid pain, but I now wonder if having had the experience and knowing what could have been might have been better than avoiding heartbreak? Don’t get me wrong, I have slogged through eight hour shifts while in the hellish throes of heartbreak. I came out of it a different person. It showed me my strength. That’s the thing about heartbreaks, they’re scary but you eventually heal.

Every hardship is a testament to one’s resilience. In essence, there are no good and bad experiences. They just are, however some experiences are so low-vibe they bring trauma. Traumatic experiences need healing, otherwise they hold power over us, hence my years-long stay in singledom, but even in the process of healing there is growth. Sometimes enlightenment can only be seen in the darkness.

At this juncture in my life, after years of making fear-based decisions, why not make decisions based on the bright side and work through the dark if or when it happens? Life may have some unexpectedly pleasant surprises outside of the comfort zone.