HAMPTON RENAISSANCE

Nyctophobia

by Solyana Bekele

 

Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. When I was little, I was deathly afraid of the dark. My mind would make up and animate the most terrifying, bone-chilling monsters every night when the lights were off. Some say this fear of the dark is tied to the fear of the unknown–a fear that likely kept our ancestors alive. 

 

Now, in an age where we like to think most things are known, this fear of the unknown has stayed with us in a different way. The fear of the unknown is the fear of the future–the greatest unknown. Mankind has always fought this gaping chasm by predicting things about natural and manmade occurrences alike–the weather, a world war; but I reckon it’s a losing battle. 

 

Tomorrow will never be guaranteed. One will never be able to plan their posterity to the minute. This should scare any feeling and thinking human; it scares me to paralyzation; to the point where thinking or planning about my future is a dreaded, heart-wrenching task that I avoid at all costs.

 

It’s no great help when these unwanted thoughts are thrown at you by your restless brain in the dark of night and you realize this: your desire to control the most uncontrollable aspect of life has kept you up till the break of dawn. 

 

Maybe this is what it means to fear the dark; not the lack of light per se, but the fact that the dark lays bare all the things you wish to avoid in the glaring light of the day.