36. Now That’s Dark!

Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Now That’s Dark! I am willing to bet that most everyone has dark thoughts out of fear or sheer joy. Dark thoughts make me nervous and laugh, especially when I say them out loud. Traveling with a black dress, stockings, and high heels in case somebody dies, just in case. Creating a box with important documents and instructions just before I go bungee jumping. Telling myself, I can always get a divorce, 15 minutes before I get married.  There is a tendency to think that dark thoughts are not good for us. However, bear with me for a moment, I’m going somewhere with this. Dark thoughts can result in very healthy outcomes. They become an escape valve for tension, fear, and resistance. Dark thoughts are necessary. They are natural and they may be sublimated into art or a different types of products. Just because you think it doesn’t make it true or mean it will come true. The dark thoughts can become a catalyst of feelings and a bridge to creation.   Dark thoughts are healthy. Whoever came up with dark chocolate had an extraordinarily healthy dark thought. There is an analogy waiting to happen. The darker the chocolate, the healthier it is. Think about it, dark chocolate comes in different concentrations of cacao. The more cacao the healthier, is has less sugar, at least, that is what Lindt does. The less amount of sugar, the more cacao, the better an antioxidant it is for your body. Someone thought I, a chocolate lover, would appreciate 95% cacao chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Not the best surprise. I know now, that the person’s intention was to extend my life. If you ask me, I prefer unhealthy and sweet milk chocolate.   Antioxidants are supposed to help ward off the materialization of one of a big dark thought. I’ll give you a hint, it starts with C and ends in ancer!  That is a dark thought, a looming fear. However, the thought of the big C word has led people to change their diets, and habits, to even enjoy their lives and the people around them more profoundly. It didn’t stem from sheer joy, it came from a dark place, motivated by the possibility of loss and the certainty of impermanence…  Marriage is like dark chocolate. 95% cacao, it isn’t sweet, it doesn’t taste that great, the package is prettier than the contents, but it is healthy for you, so you live longer. You can either buy 95% dark chocolate or get married. The effect is the same.  Marriage is a dark endeavor. You get to know the most intimate side of a human. Their darkest thoughts, the healthy ones that are vents and the ones that take you into a vortex of pain and anguish. Marriage is dark. You can tell your spouse, careful, that is a poisonous animal and your spouse will get bitten or stung and have the gall to say, I had no idea! Meanwhile, the other spouse thinks it will make a difference to say BUT I JUST TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS DANGEROUS. Only to hear in return, what? You never said that. Knowing your spouse you can anticipate what they are going to do and still be useless in stopping something horrible from happening because it is like your voice becomes inaudible. That is a part of being a witness to someone else’s, like a sociological experiment, you are not to intervene, not out of ethics, but because you are invisible. We protect our spouses as best we can knowing that it is terminal. Everything is terminal. Now that is dark. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Teo3of5p