MC Abdullah talks about the importance of darkness in today's over-lit world in this thought-provoking article.
I am a star gazer. And one of the things that upsets me the most is the absence of darkness in an over-lit world that prevents me from looking at stars and identifying constellations and generally experiencing the calm that darkness brings. I am not an astronomer and I don't really need an uncluttered view of the sky. But, just like any other human being, my regular rhythm of waking and sleep is a biological parallel of the rising and setting of the sun, the so-called Circadian Rhythm.
The theory is based on a simple premise: Our biological rhythms were hard-wired into our bodies during a time before artificial light, to take advantage of both bright days and dark nights.
Those rhythms are now in danger of being disturbed as we live our lives as though day time never ends. In the age of the smart phone and social media, we are subliminally awake to the notion that our friends and relatives living in far-away time zones are awake and going about their businesses. And so night fall never really arrives!
The frightening aspect of this is that we have lost sight of our place in the universe, the enormity and importance of our spiritual existence. If one cannot actually do it, one has only to imagine sleeping under an inky black sky, with the knowledge that the Milky Way (the edge of our galaxy) is present right overhead, to fully grasp the importance of needing darkness to experience that feeling.
We, as humans, are so easily impressed by the great new strides made by modern technology. But we come up painfully short when we need to ponder the great wonders of the universe hanging above us, a reminder of God's creation and His intelligent design -- something that cannot really be appreciated in the absence of total darkness and the calm it brings into our lives.
I don’t know how many of the folks reading this piece experienced the famous power outage of 2003 that plunged almost the entire province of Ontario (as well as the North East and Mid West US states) for over 2 nights in August into darkness. The camaraderie and friendly atmosphere that followed between neighbours and road users/motorists (having to negotiate intersections without traffic lights) in the dark evenings and nights during that incident was something to be seen to be believed. People actually came out of their houses and greeted their neighbours and it took a spell of darkness to work that miracle. It was exciting especially as it happened in the summer and the stars could be seen clearly up ahead over a large swathe of the eastern parts of the North American continent.
We are born with the ability to use our eyes in low light settings but, unfortunately, we rarely have occasion to use that skill these days. We switch on lights at the drop of a hat.
Artificial light blocks out the night sky in much of the industrial world and it has consequences for the environment and the humans who live in that world. Melatonin is a hormone that is produced by the pineal gland in humans and animals and it regulates sleep and wakefulness. The production of melatonin in our bodies happens in the dark and, when there is too much light around, the production of that hormone is inhibited. Lack of melatonin in our bloodstream has been linked to breast and prostate cancers.
Some countries like the US have begun to take the importance of darkness pretty seriously and are actually drawing up plans to cut unnecessary lighting, and investing in technologies like light shields that reduce sky glow and other ideas like bouncing artificial night lights back into space.
The skies on the whole are beautiful. And starlit night-time skies especially are so very precious. If our children are to appreciate the miracle of a darkened sky, it’s time we all scaled back and turned the lights off. It is tragic that they constantly look down at their phones with little regard for the miracle that plays out each and every night, the miracle of a starlit heaven just waiting for us to gaze and be humbled. The least we can do is to not take our phones with us to bed and be sure to make the bedrooms pitch dark (no night lamps, no LED clocks, etc) before going to sleep. Meditation and darkness are essentials for spirituality and great ideas to take hold.
So, shut out those needless lights and make sure you are conscious when day turns to night....and do look up at the skies whenever possible. There’s lots going on up there, believe me!
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