And then there was light.
From the very beginning, we are reminded: Life is full of both darkness and light. They are forever trading punches, back and forth. The earth spins on her axis to reveal this very thing. One minute the sun is here. The next minute, not. In our lives, in our days, sometimes from moment to moment, we know darkness, and then we know light.
Life is changes, and this is one of the changing elements, the shifting sands, the passing tides — the light to dark, and back again.
I believe, too, that some people are lighter than others, not in their outward appearances, but in their souls, their hearts. I have met people who I am sure do not have a mean bone in their body. I have also met people who were deceitful, cruel, vindictive.
We can see this historically, no doubt. A few of this day’s past events make me wonder about the light and the dark.
The first one I noticed? The was the date that Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker met one another, in the year 1930. They were barely adults by their measure in years, as Clyde was 20. Bonnie was 19. The address was 105 Herbert Street in West Dallas. Bonnie was out of work at the time — a seamstress without seams, it seems. So she was staying with the young woman who owned the house, a friend of Bonnie’s. The friend had broken her arm and needed help. When Clyde came in, Bonnie was in the kitchen fixing a cup of hot chocolate for her friend. So that is when they met, immediately smitten with one another. Love at first sight. That moment when the piece of chocolate fell into the peanut butter jar.
But the end result was not good. We all know what happened four years later when they were shot to death by a posse of officers waiting for them on a lonesome Louisiana road.
Yet. Before the two met, they weren’t hardened criminals by any means. Bonnie, it seems, just married too young, at the age of 16. And Clyde? His first brush with crime was running from police after not returning a rental car on time. His second offense was stealing some turkeys.
So. I don’t know how the switch gets flipped, that light switch on the wall, that can turn a room dark in a blink.
It was also on this date, in 1781, when Benedict Arnold led a British Naval group to Richmond, Virginia, and captured the city, setting it on fire. But what made the light go dark there? He was born in Connecticut to a good family. Three of his siblings died from yellow fever in his youth. Benedict was close to his mother, but she died in 1759. And his father was an alcoholic, dying from that disease in 1761.
He became a military man for the soon to be United States, serving in many battles and expeditions. Many historians say that the reason for his treason was that he married the wrong person — Peggy Shippen. The circumstances around his act had been building. Arnold had been badly wounded twice in battle and had lost his business in Connecticut. He was profoundly bitter about his life. He harbored huge resentments toward several younger generals who had been promoted ahead of him. They had been given honors, which he thought he deserved. All of this, and he was being nagged by his Tory wife, Peggy Shippen. So he flipped sides.
This generalized story stuck with me when I was a kid. Sometimes, we’d go out to breakfast, and I’d see Eggs Benedict on the menu. I would not order them, for the very thought of old Benedict Arnold. I think I was an adult before I actually tried them. But even still today, I wish they’d change the name to something like Eggs and Canadian Bacon on English Muffins, with Hollandaise Sauce.
We do what we do, to work our way through. The light and the dark are everywhere in our world. I hope always to be on the side of honor and integrity, and never standing with the sinister or the ignoble.
=======
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato
=======
“If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.”
― Romain Rolland
=======
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
― Anne Frank
=======
The dark and the light, in treason and in gangsters.
