A friend told me about training with a kettlebell in the dark. After all, a power outage at home is no reason to lie around on the couch.
He wanted to do a Turkish get-up, an exercise he liked and knew well. But this time the kettlebell drifted a little, he tried in every way to hold it, but dropped it. Fortunately, almost without injuries and harm to the furniture.
There was some flashlight light, but it was not enough for such a complex trajectory. As you raise the kettlebell, it constantly tries to slip away and fall. The body automatically makes micro-adjustments to stabilize it. But only if the eyes transmit the signal in time.
While the Mind is busy thinking, the subconscious is hard at work, reacting to deviations of the kettlebell and monitoring the surrounding environment. In dim light, and especially in darkness, that feedback becomes inadequate.
The light disappears, and the most ordinary action suddenly becomes dangerous. “Wolf pits,” obstacles, and sharp corners appear everywhere. In metaphorical terms, mastered territory becomes terra incognita, unknown land. Overconfidence is punished in full.
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, the family manuscript reads: “To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.”
Light is not a luxury, merely a utility. But let it disappear for a day, and the world begins to come apart at the seams. Chaos devours it.
And this is when you finally understand why it is so important to keep the light within. It helps you see the meaning of what is happening when you cannot see a thing.
Most importantly, the light within sustains the relationship between us. Or perhaps it is the other way around. After all, we are not the ones who switched that light on inside ourselves, are we?
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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