There’s magic in the dark solitude and quiet stillness after midnight

By David McElroy · February 25, 2021

I should be asleep now. It’s 1 a.m. and I’m exhausted. I slept only about four hours last night. Wednesday was a long and exhausting day, made longer by my lack of sleep.

But I’m sitting in the silent darkness of my front yard, watching clouds move across the night sky, creating endless patterns above the dark tree branches above me. One moment the sky is clear and the full moon is bright. The next moment, the clouds mute the light and diffuse its brightness like a giant sheet in the sky.

This is my favorite time of day. There are no people around. No ringing phones. Nobody who needs something from me. Everything seems clear. Life makes more sense.

In this peaceful stillness, I am the closest I come to being joyful and happy these days. My feelings and thoughts turn to a future which seems just barely out of reach. And I always think of her.

I don’t know anymore who she is. I used to be so certain. I can’t decide whether it was better to have blind faith in someone who bitterly disappointed me or to have no one in particular in my heart to have faith in.

There was pain in wanting someone who turned out not to be what I believed she was. But there is emptiness — an oddly different pain of nothingness — in having a need and not knowing who might fill the need.

My visions of the future still seem clear, but it’s almost like a wonderful movie in which the co-star has been cut out. And without the woman in this role, my vision of the future no longer makes sense.

My heart needs to think about these things, but the rumination seems to be most useful to me during the still hours after midnight. When it’s daylight and the rest of the world bustles around me, I have trouble seeing things through spiritual eyes. Instead, I see the world through the lens of pragmatism that comes from a culture which has different beliefs than my own.

In this way, I’m the most peaceful and happy in these hours, especially on a winter night when the temperature has fallen to only 60 degrees. The things I want — family, creation, community, love — seem so close. So possible. Just barely out of my reach — but almost here.

Lucy lies next to me on the steps of the porch, panting as she watches the world in front of us and then as she raises her ears to listen to a train in the distance. It’s a peaceful sort of existence which millions and millions of other men and women have experienced over the centuries of our civilization. It’s an introspective alone time when everything seems possible — and a person can believe that tomorrow might be very different from today.

Life will never be perfect. My life around others will probably always leave me feeling like an alien who’s looking for “my people.” But in the stillness such as what I feel right now, I can believe that my people exist. I can believe my family will exist. I can believe there’s still love and meaning for me.

The daylight will bring new problems — and a list of old problems which haven’t yet been solved — but in this quiet stillness, I can believe the world makes sense. I can believe that I’ll be happy and loved and satisfied. I can believe in her.

And that’s why I need this beautiful, dark time of the day. It’s the only time when everything I need seems just around the corner — and that allows me to have blind faith in things which I can’t yet see.

Share on Social Networks

I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

Related Posts