Even when things are just a bit out of the ordinary, I like to tell myself that one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. Here’s the quote:
It is always darkest just before the dawn.
— Thomas Fuller, English theologian
You have probably heard this one may times. It often shows up in action-type movies, where the characters are facing seeming annihilation, and they need some quick words of inspiration to move them forward. And inevitably, it works. Dawn does indeed come, and usually immediately.
Now real life does not work that way, and the coronavirus will not work that way either. But I still like to revisit this quote, this idea, for a deeper look. Rather than just nodding along with a quick turn of phrase, I like to sit with the imagery of this quote just a little bit. If you take it in two parts, it can really help put your day in perspective.
Part one is the darkness. Just think about the darkness for a minute, whatever it may be. This part of the quote just takes you to the place where you are feeling down, or frustrated, or shut off from the world. In this moment, that is all you know. There is dark, and it is everywhere, and you cannot think past it, or even really remember what light looks like, or feels like.
But if you walk through to the end of the quote, you realize that you have been in the dark before. This dark will not go on forever. And dawn, with its warmth, and hope, and light, is on the way. These things are all cyclical; life itself is often cyclical. You have probably been on the earth for over 6,000 days, and each one of those days hit a time where darkness was complete. But each one of those days also turned over into dawn again. This one will too.
Winston Churchill summed up the same idea somewhat more glibly, saying:
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
So today, and this week, I am going to make it my goal to keep perspective. If home schooling or remote working or quarantining or stay-at-homing or just plain worrying seems endless and seems to envelop me like darkness, I will try to see in my head that first sliver of sunshine coming on the horizon, and remember that it is always darkest before the dawn.
Have a great and healthy week everybody.