There’s no freedom in the shadows. There’s never any freedom in the shadows and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned it’s that ‘the things’ cast very long shadows…

Why do I call them ‘the things’, I wonder? Should I not try to define them a bit better than this? Should I not try to be more explicit than this? On reflection, I think not. I won’t make any definite statements. Except to say that all is shadow. All is shadow – shadow overlapping shadow overlapping shadow. We’re caught up in the shadow-play and even if, for the briefest of moments, there is a patch of light appearing, like a sudden sunbeam penetrating from above, we will pay it no heed. We’ve been trained only to see the shadows – nothing else figures for us, nothing else makes sense. We’re too long in the shadows at this stage and the light has become a stranger to us.

If a patch of light suddenly fell upon us, what would we do? I just wondered that just now. The question just went through my mind. Would we sit still and enjoy it, or would it freak us out? Would it be poison to us? Would we respond by hopping nimbly back into the shadows, just as if nothing had happened? That really is the question isn’t it, now that I come to think of it. Where does our true allegiance lie, to the light or to the dark? Does the light make you uncomfortable? It makes me uncomfortable, I freely admit it. It’s too much for me and before I know it I’ve hopped sideways into the shadow again. Where I’m comfortable. Back to my shadow plans, back to my shadowy ideas, back into the unceasing play of the shadows.  Only it isn’t really ‘play’ is it? Not in the genuinely ‘playful’ sense of the word. And what other sense is there, I might ask? If play isn’t really playful then what is it?

There isn’t anything playful when you’re in the shadows because all they ever do is lean on you. They lean on you so hard. They lean on you night and day – even when you’re asleep they lean on you. That’s what shadows do – they take away your freedom, they keep you on the run. There’s nothing very playful about that, is there? There’s no freedom when you’re living out your life in the Shadow World and there’s no freedom to leave the Shadow World either! Obviously there isn’t. We’re not free to leave the Shadow World. How could we be free to leave the shadows when they work by taking away our freedom? We’re not free to do anything, let alone leave.

We’ll never leave. We’re afraid to leave. The light scares us too much. We’re addicted to the dark and we’ve made our home there. We’re addicted to the dark and it has become too much a part of us. It is us. We’re poor shadow creatures flitting this way and that, preoccupied with our wretched meaningless rituals and routines, bereft of any trace of freedom and yet at the same time not free to see this. Not free to do anything. Even if someone were to pull us out of this dark netherworld, we’d run straight back. I know I would, anyway…

Image taken from: The 13th Floor