I do agree that parents do not teach their children enough about darkness, and yes, indeed does it cripple us as adults. I mean, why should we fear what we cannot see? And how can a night-light achieve the sense of comfort? Essentially, I think that it is the human way of protecting itself from the unknown and that is where darkness enters the picture as we fear anything that we cannot see. However, this may also be related to our cultural roots and our upbringing as that plays a vital part in our life as it is what shapes us as adults. In terms of using the darkness to help cure our emotionalales, it may work for some, while for others who are afraid of the dark for example, it may cause more damage. This is something that is judged on a individual basis, and again, it relies on our upbringing and how we were exposed to darkness as children. Some people find comfort by sitting in the dark, while others cannot sleep without a night-light. I agree with the fact that turning into darkness and coping with loss of complete control over surrounding can lead to wisdom and deliver us from fear. This is a very important aspect that we need to deal with in our lives, and if darkness is your fear, we need to turn to that in order to cope it because it doesn’t necessarily have to be something negative.
From Mr Nabeel Al Beloushi
Coordinator based in Dubai
I disagree with parents not teaching their children enough about darkness and that it results in crippling us as adults because essentially, darkness has to do with fearing the unknown, so how can parents teach us enough about it, if they don’t have the answers themselves?
Whether turning into darkness will help us cope with our fear or not is something that is judged on an individual basis as it completely depends on the individual himself and his ability to cope with his or her fear/strength. Some people have strong personalities and chose to face their fear, whereas others spend their whole lives running away from it. However, in my opinion, it is always best to turn to your fear and deal with it rather than letting it control your life and by doing so, it will help you in many aspects of your life. We as human beings are weak and tend to chose the easy way out, that is why we were taught to switch on the night-light as soon as we got scared as children, and this would make everything clear, but who decided that comfort can only be found in light?
From Mr Abdullah Al Bannai
Entrepeneur based in Sharjah
I do agree with the fact that parents don’t teach children to cope with darkness as a positive environment to a certain extent. A child’s mind is like clay that can be moulded in whichever form the parents like. However, I do not associate darkness with negativity. The only reason why children or even we as adults are afraid to go into a pitch dark room sometimes is because we can’t see what or who is in the room. This makes us anxious; not fearful. Even though children might be afraid of the dark, I do not think it cripples them in any way as they grow up to be adults. It is about how we choose to perceive. I associate darkness with peace and quiet, radiating positive vibes. A lot of people might have completely opposite views. Therefore, it’s all about perception. Turning into darkness may help to cure emotional ales for some people. People have different ways of coping with emotional disturbances. Some choose to become workaholics and keep themselves distracted through work. Some choose to become socially very active and interact with a lot of people. And some choose to be left alone in peace. When a person is broken down emotionally, he might want to sit quietly in peace in a dark room or under a beautiful night sky to reflect upon himself and his emotions and fight with the turbulence he is feeling inside. Again, it’s about how different people perceive emotions and deal with it. However, I do think that once a person comes out of his shell, he does become wiser. But fear is something natural and it is very common to associate fear with darkness but it is not necessarily right.
From Ms Masooma Bilgrami
Accounting student based in Dubai.
Fear from darkness, I believe, comes mostly from parents. If parents taught their children from a young age to never fear the dark, they will grow up accordingly having a healthy reaction towards the dark. For example, I have many friends who still fear being alone in the dark until this day. That is mostly because their parents didn’t raise them to cope with darkness or because their parents were afraid of darkness. In turn, their children become emotionally weak in terms of dealing with anything that has to do with dark. I was personally raised to never fear darkness. When my sister and I used to fear sleeping in our own room in the dark, my mother would say, “never fear anything because God will always be with you and will protect you”, therefore, we didn’t grow up fearing it because it wasn’t worth fearing; we grew up actually knowing that darkness won’t harm us. Ironically, we used to watch horror movies with mom and we adapted to sleeping in a completely dark room afterwards, which helped us grow stronger. Many people fear the dark not because of darkness itself, but because of the ‘imagined’ dangers associated with it and mostly brought up by the media, books, stories and movies. The main reason for fearing darkness is the fear of the ‘unknown’ since we don’t see anything once the lights are switched off and therefore, we don’t feel safe. Coping with the darkness and loss of complete control will, I believe, help teach people how to regain their control of various things in life. It will basically help to grow with a strong foundation. In addition, studies proved that darkness help people sleep better since light directly affects the brain’s inner clock, and delays sleep onset and the brain interprets the presence of light as a sign that it is still daytime. When people sleep better, they become emotionally stronger, compared to those who don’t get enough sleep. Darkness is a main and simple part of life, so it’s unhealthy to grow up fearing it. Darkness is mostly feared because it’s associated with depression and death, but coping with darkness can broaden our wisdom and help us understand and face the concept of death. Therefore, fearing something won’t help us face it. Coping with darkness will definitely make us stronger people who have more control over things and help teach us that it’s okay to face the unknown compared to fearing the dark that will grow our vulnerability within us and won’t help us later in life.
From Ms Sherouk Zakaria
Media person based in Sharjah
I do agree that growing up with the fear of dark cripples us as adults because it all comes down to our upbringing and how we were taught to deal with our fears. The stronger the foundation, the better we become at dealing with the unknown. Darkness has and will always be associated with negativity, however, it doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to that. Sometimes, we may find positive outcomes from the dark as it gives us peace. I was raised to stand up for myself and deal with my fears, and darkness is one of them. As a result, I can switch of the light without having to fear the unknown, because if it comes down to fearing the unknown, that can also be found in day light. Being able to cope with darkness as a positive environment is a vital part of our upbringing and will definitely help us later in life, not only when it comes to dealing with darkness, but other fears as well. Darkness should be the least thing to fear, because judging from my experience in life, it has helped me to cure a lot of emotional ales.
From Mr Mohammad Hassan
Emirati law student in Dubai
Facebook comments:
Turning into darkness will lead us more into the depth of nowhere and gone astray, whereas in light we can see things clearly and therefore we can see where we are heading and which path we should take.
From Racky Maravilla Elevencione
UAE
Darkness makes us think clearly as we cannot hear or see anything other than our inside sound and thought. However, that may be associated with fear from unknown surroundings.
From Sawsan Mohd Khamis
UAE
I think it is embedded in our religion, so we follow it, hence there is no question about following darkness. #justsayin
From Leena Samuel
Dubai
Children have enough to cope with the pressure of studies and of course, they now have the added problems of cyber bullying too. I don’t think any child needs to know what adults deal with and as they grow up, they will understand darkness as they watch their parents. Plus, maybe they have already seen some in loss of a loved one or a divorce.
From Judith Cooke Welling
Prees, Shropshire
