Good or Bad?
Good or Bad?
Because I’m of a certain age, I still enjoy some songs by The Indigo Girls and I remember the heyday of girl power folk rock in the 1990s. I was listening to a song of theirs, that's a favourite, in the car today - Closer to Fine - and I was struck by one of the lyrics.
"Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear " - Indigo Girls, 1989
This line has stood out for me before in this song because it just feels true.
Our fears and angers seem to have an urgency that says, “Look here! Look here! Pay attention to me! I’m important.”
A nice, calm feeling, while nice, can’t compete with that dark urgency whispering what a good person you are for paying attention to the fears.
I also happened to be listening to a podcast recently where the guest on the podcast brought up the famous quote from the movie “The Usual Suspects”.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” - Verbal Kint
But the podcast guest said that’s not the greatest trick. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that good doesn’t exist.
That struck me because I hear that idea from people quite a lot.
Many people seem to believe that evil exists, but we have to create good. That the darkness, as it were, is true while lightness is hard won.
While in fact, the opposite is true.
We are born perfect and whole and good. Babies are pure joy in small, squishy, stinky packages.
We create the negativity and suffering ourselves. We don't have to prefer a lot of things that show up in our lives. We also don't have to suffer them. We can simply live them.
Another place recently where I bumped into these ideas of good or bad is from "The Lord of the Rings".
In the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, the reason the bad magic is so evil is not in any inherent evilness, but in that it acts to create hopelessness.
The dark magic worked via hopelessness.
Anyone susceptible to hopelessness couldn’t withstand it, and so the realms of men fell to Sauron. But the Hobbits were pure and were not susceptible in the same way.
They kept hope.
Our beginning state and default, our square one, is hope and goodness. We are, at heart, good.
The idea that good doesn’t exist would be the greatest trick ever pulled by the Devil because then there wouldn’t be hope. Or we’d have to fight and strive against our terrible nature.
Except when we give up striving so hard, we generally realize that everything is ok.
Listen for lightness even if it's hard to hear. It will sing to your soul. And hope will creep in.
With Love,
Sara Joy
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