I struggle with emotional regulation. I often get so overwhelmed that I don’t know what’s true anymore, and this makes me paranoid and anxious. All I wish for is clarity and honesty, a clear set of guidelines for the next steps; but all I can see is a muddle, an obstinate obstacle that has no right of existing. Yet exist it does, and it declares its right to be just the way it is. So, perhaps I’m wrong after all, and it’s me who doesn’t have the right to exist. It’s one or the other, isn’t it?!
Whether I’m standing in the dark or the light on any given day, I’m always conscious of the presence of the other. I thought I could write my way out of the dark, into the light, and stay there like some kind of ethereal creature saved from the abyss. Instead my writing goes something like this: I write a dark poem, I write a light poem, I write a poem that goes from light to dark, and I write a poem that goes from dark to light. Like a pendulum I swing back and forth, seeking for that elusive moment when the motion stops and there is nothing but stillness.
I wrote about Hedonism before, stilling the call of unpleasantness by seeking pleasurable sensations. While Hedonism can be a helpful philosophy that enables us to take ourselves and life a little less seriously, we know that unpleasant situations will arise anyway. We know this from experience, yet part of us still expects plain sailing every day. Activist poet Andrea Gibson says, “From early childhood we are taught that the definition of a good life is one in which the waters are routinely calm, where our boat is rarely rocked. Culture instructs us to think that the sea of life should be tranquil, and any ripple means something has gone wrong. But the sea was never meant to be calm. Waves are part of the design.”
If unpleasantness is part and parcel of daily life, then how can we be expected to regulate our emotions? Grief tender and author Sophy Banks recalls the writing of psychotherapist and creator of somatic experiencing Peter Levine. She says that he wrote of “pendulation between resources and pain.” She explains, “I find it a helpful metaphor for all of life. I need to continually pay attention to the river banks, to what holds and sustains me, what pulls me towards life when there is so much of being alive that brings fear, disappointment, outrage, sorrow, and more.”
I love that metaphor of resources being the river banks that hold us while we flow to our destination. The resources are our families or found families, our communities, and shared rituals and wisdom. Pendulation reminds me more of the Epicurean philosophy. I will write about Epicureanism in a future article. But I do believe that in seeking pleasant sensations, like that of beauty, we are trying to balance our tumultuous psyche. Buddhist poet Steven Nightingale writes, “In the experience of beauty, we learn to tell things alike; to move from the darkness of oneself to a sympathy, an open rapport; a longed for, conscious union with the world. Beauty is a lucid and graceful assembly of forms that calls the mind close to life, our bodies close to the earth, and all of us closer to one another.”
I’d like to take a look at the depiction of light and dark in visual art. Edvard Munch was known for his deeply emotive and psychologically-charged paintings that often explored themes of anxiety and isolation. The Scream is undoubtedly his most iconic work, but Despair is a related work, also capturing a profound sense of inner turmoil. However, Munch's artistic expression wasn’t limited to these darker, more brooding motifs. Paintings like his Sunrise series showcase a very different emotional landscape—one of luminosity, tranquillity, and connection to the natural world.
This dichotomy in Munch's work suggests an interesting dynamic at work in the human experience and in the seeking of balance. His melancholic, tortured compositions reflect the profound psychological depths and burdens that individuals can grapple with. Despair encapsulates that sense of existential crisis and the overwhelming weight of one's inner demons. Yet, Munch's ability to also depict scenes of radiant beauty and serenity points to an innate human drive to find respite among the darker aspects of existence. The sunrise paintings could be interpreted as Munch's own search for equilibrium, a counterbalance to the anguish and isolation expressed in works like The Scream and Despair.
This artistic duality speaks to the multifaceted nature of the human psyche and the universal quest to reconcile our most turbulent emotional states with moments of transcendence, wonder, and calm. Munch’s skill in inhabiting both the light and the dark realms of human experience suggests an acknowledgment that balance and wholeness are essential to the richness of the human condition. Perhaps through the act of painting, Munch was able to explore and grapple with the full spectrum of human emotions, from the depths of anguish to the heights of wonder and calm, or “all the heavens and hells” as Jane Hirshfield writes in her poem Late Prayers. Munch’s talent to capture both the light and the dark aspects of the human condition suggests a deeper personal journey towards wholeness.
I’d like to share two poems with you on the theme of light and dark and emotional regulation. The first one is an extract from a longer poem by Polish poet Anna Świrszczyńska. The second one is a short poem written by me.
extract from Song of Plenitude
by Anna Świrszczyńska
Out of suffering joy arose, I have suffered, therefore I have the right to exist so strongly. I have gone through hell, therefore today I enter the heaven of serenity, a round heaven of a strong serenity, of a serenity growing in power, of a power growing in power, as if into a voice of a pipe organ, as if into an expanding inundation of light. I enter into a lasting light.
Night flower
by Conny Borgelioen
It is not the amount of tender light that is important to make the self-concerned Christmas cactus flower. It’s the amount of stubborn dark that decides if the plant will give you it’s fragile fuchsia explosion from areoles, so brilliantly done. I’m hungry for the flower to happen.
Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I’ll leave you with a few more resources to help you find your equilibrium.
heron suite: crying and laughing at the same time by Kate Horowitz.
Finding Beauty After Loss Part I by Manuela Thames.
CLOUD by Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett (video).
Very much enjoyed your article, especially since it touched on the Greeks. (People need perspective.) I also had not see Munch's The Sun. A real revelation.... Finally, I much prefer your fine 'tender poem' to the more polemical one, if you don't mind me saying.
Beautiful essay, I like very much how you are examine layers of yourself for us to go on that journey with you. I always used to want to resolve my poems. Later I would see how the ending though beautiful felt a bit tagged on that I hadn’t quite managed to be completely honest somehow. Now I am writing what’s there and it feels more true and close to home.