The Way Through: Incorporating Our Lightness and Darkness

The last year has been very difficult for all of us. In many ways it recalls the opening lines of Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

Brexit and the rise of populism in the United States, the shifting of a score of democratic countries towards authoritarian government, are represented as a form of darkness. Donald Trump rode the rage of those oppressed by neglect to the Presidency. They saw their livelihood, identity and even humanity constrained by the professional, financial and economic regulation of the doyens who shape US policy, rule the European Common Market and the Global Development System. Yet, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times reports that 2017 was the best of times, the best year ever in human history in terms of progress made against poverty, hunger, diseases and illiteracy.

So how can we deal with darkness and lightness, the best of times and the worst of times at the same time? Ironically, these professional and economic constraining forces—parents of our current darkness—drew their inspiration from the age of enlightenment: a century of philosophy, of reason and science infused by “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” This enlightenment was born in the darkness that filled Paris streets with aristocratic blood flowing from the Guillotine.

Religion, separated from the state, was placed in opposition to science. Social status was to be based on merit rather than birth. The market, through Adam Smith, was given its invisible hand for self-regulation. The subjective values of spirituality, sociability and creativity that account for meaning, emotion and motive gave way to the more objective values of scientific truth, technical rationality and the overwhelming weight of economic values.  

In our world it was Brexit that awoke in me an awareness of the co-existence of this same lightness and darkness. As Brexit looked as though it would not pass, I was surprised to feel a pang of emotion, regret for a lost potential. When Brexit did pass I felt a sense of relief. I realized that my head and my heart were in two different places. My head was with professional objectivity—of course we would be better off economically and market-wise by staying in the Union. But my English heart was swayed by a sense of loss of identity and meaning—my subjective side.  Was I as much a part of the problem? Had I in spite of all intentions to the contrary over-professionalized my approach to life and work? Had I not been listening to another side of myself?  And now, all of this is happening at a time in which I am retiring from professional life, as I have built it. So how do I use my remaining time to pull all of this together in a useful perspective?

• How have our professional norms, the way we have tackled our life and work, done justice to both the light and the dark?
• What has been missing or overly present, and how can we reshape our norms and practices accordingly?  
•  How can we honor and transcend both our lightness and our darkness?