Nights are so off putting at times. The complete lack of sound and motion. You are left to you own thoughts and there are not very many ways to allow your mind to discern what is real from what is abstract and what is soley ones own consciousness. I’m not talking about hallucinating or a type of day dreaming, although I could see how easy it would be to fall into a state of delusion, but I’m talking about basic thoughts of life, self, interests, problems etc. The mind begins to swirl and there is no rock or benchmark to bind your mind to as it begins to float away from its dock. When there is no community or bustle around you to remind you that the sun will indeed come up, people must obey the law of gravity and you are not alone, then your world all resides within your own mind and the mind has no bounds. Your empty and dark surrounding becomes the perfect home for you mind to extend into, the world becomes an extension of your consciousness and it becomes less and less clear as to what is in and what is outside your thoughts.
Are the problems of the day as major as they seem? Why after I fall asleep and awake to the morning sun does the intensity of my thoughts or their urgency fade? Maybe the night provides the perfect backdrop for the mind to begin to set itself free and take over the consciousness and drive it into the surreal. Its dark, quite, and no one is around to challenge its attempts to break free. Right now time seems endless and my worries are loose ended and indefinite, however logically I know that tomorrow all will be back to normal and all i need is some sleep.
It is amazing how difficult it is for my day-self to completely understand the emotions of my night-self is experiencing and vice versa. A scary movie in the woods at 2 am is not the same at 2 PM but it is the same woods and I am the same person. Who needs drugs to escape reality when reality is so volatile already between night and day. A man jumps off of the top of the building and commits suicide at night, if he only waited till day break would he be far from those thoughts only hours into the morning? More importantly how much of what we think is fact is nothing more then a delusion, our hatred for another country or race? Do we at times of fear and pain fall into our own versions of these dark and lonely nights, where our minds ever so subtly break away from our cast to reality? Only 2 years ago Iran was full of anti- democratic people, stocks had no ceiling, houses were an easy ticket to personal wealth and so on. Did day just finally break? How often are our minds pulled from reality because of the darkness of rhetoric, and media. If I didn’t remind myself of the day on a night like this I would surely be lost. Lesson learned Descartes, lesson learned.
Sean Shadmand 