I love coming across words that I’ve not encountered before. When they appear I stare at them in mind as if an unusual bird has just flown across my field of vision. I look up from the page and let the word flitter within my thought processes, waiting for the ideas and links it creates to pollinate my brain. I’m a verbal thinker so I think in words. An unfamiliar word, then, becomes a new concept that expands my worldview. Which is curious, in this instance, because the word ‘endarkenment’ surely means the opposite of what it makes me do?
I encountered it in the amazing book Women Who Run With the Wolves - a book I read in the hope that it would show me new ways of knowing. Unfamiliar ways of knowing help you make sense of what it means to be alive. This is exciting and invigorating and worthwhile in itself, but it’s also CRITICAL training for you as a writer or any kind of creative person. New ways of knowing force you to awaken your conscious mind. Like love, new ways of knowing take you beyond the farthest reaches of what your imagination will ever find on its own. People often ask where ideas come from and in my experience they come from being prepared to go beyond the edge of what you know. This is one of the main pillars of my creative process. Getting out of my comfort zone.
I have obviously known and been curious about the word enlightenment for a long time, but having a word for its opposite is alluring and helpful in understanding what enlightenment actually means. When I first thought of endarkenment I immediately began thinking about what’s going on in politics in the UK today, and whether we are in a period of political endarkenment. In some ways it feels as though we are, although around me in my life and the communities I’m part of I see the opposite, which is confusing.
But what about for us individually? What constitutes bringing about a sense of endarkenment in us on a day to day basis? I would definitely say alcohol, which I rarely drink now precisely because of the gloom that descends in the days afterwards. My phone too, which is not to say a smart phone is not a transformational piece of technology a few times a day, but I spend far more time doom scrolling on it than that.
As the word began to settle in the nest of my life experiences so far, my mind told me the concept of endarkenment means closing down and hiding from the truth. It doesn’t feel like an end-goal though. It feels more like a mode of thinking we might get stuck in every now and then rather than a destination. I often get stuck and forget wisdom I spent many years trying to accrue. I slump, physically and mentally from time to time. We all do. The way of out of these modes of endarkenment for me is to pursue meaning. Being an autotelic (one who does things for their own sake) helps because it requires you to forget goals and enjoy the relationship between things. To find intrinsic meaning in the moment of doing whatever it is rather than focussing on the extrinsic measurable value of whatever it is once it has been completed.
This is a curious thing about both words, I now begin to realise. Enlightenment as a concept is always pitched as a goal - I’ve always seen it as something you aim for or reach after a period of struggle. But endarkenment feels more like a process. There is no conclusion to endarkenment. No insight as a result of it. And this is the gift discovering the world has given me. Because it has made me realise enlightenment can’t really be a goal either. It has never sat comfortably within me as a ‘goal’ and now I can see why. By being aware of its opposite I can see it is a process of being between things. I’ve always wondered what it would take for me to become ‘enlightened’. Now I realise it’s a journey and not a destination it makes much more sense. I can let go of it in lots of ways, which feels true. I can just ‘be’ in the process of moving towards it instead.
I think this is why we must look into the darkness if we want to see the light. We need to be conscious of the opposite of things to see what we thought we knew, anew.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading.
Dan