The shadow knows!

While waiting for my train today the sun was bright enough for the first time in a while to actually cast a good shadow. It felt like spring was just around the corner.

Sometimes we forget that there’s always another side to things. We attach judgements to the world around us, but they’re arbitrary, and we judge the good only because we also have judged its opposite as bad.

Cold is only cold because we know warmth. High is only breathtaking when we can see the low below us. Long is a distance that means nothing unless we also have a sense of short. Happy moments are happier when contrasted with the experience of past sadness. Shadows are only dark because we’ve experienced light.

So much of what we know is the result of contrast. A fish probably couldn’t comprehend what dry is. For the same reason it’s hard for us to even try to comprehend advanced concepts in science, like higher dimensions.

So let’s not be so quick to decide that one thing is good and another is bad, and be thankful for the dark because without it we could never appreciate the light.


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