An old man lost his ring down in the basement of his house, where it was very dark.
There being no chance of his finding it there, he went out onto the sunlit street hopeful in his quest.
A stranger passing by stopped and enquired,
“What are you looking for?
Have you lost something?”
“Yes, I've lost my ring down in my basement.”
“But old man , why don't you look for it there where you have lost it?” asked the passerby in surprise.
“Don't be silly, sir!
How do you expect me to find anything in that darkness!”
I love this ancient and quirky little parable. It illustrates with gentle humour, how we often prefer to search where it is comfortable as opposed to where something was actually lost.
“Flirting with Darkness” as an approach, is a light-hearted and playful way of dispensing with the artificial sweeteners we apply to just about everything that moves ( and even a few things that seem to lay immobile )
Ever notice how tenacious we are about beliefs like “nice guys finish last” and “only the good die young”? Throughout history the “good” basically end up dead. Obviously we all end up dead sooner or later, but it wouldn’t be so bad if at least it was by natural causes ( you know, like chocolate, earth-shattering sex etc….)
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, JFK, John Lennon yada, yada, yada…need I say more…
( I’ve always loved the “yada” phrase-string…isn’t it amazing how much you can say with so few keystrokes… lol )
Entire radiant life streams extinguished simply because they became lightning rods for the forces of evil…It reminds me of the saying “the nail that sticks out is the nail that gets hammered”.
Therefore it stands to reason that if one has aspirations of helping humanity or dares to reach above and beyond their station, there’s probably a good chance that some evil hammer is lurking about in the shadows waiting to conk you on the head. But then what is one to do?
Never attempt? Never dream? Never dare? Fit in, blend in with the masses?
No way, I say…That just ain’t right…here is where we do our tiny little part in setting things straight…Get up, stand up ( yeah, Marley said it first but mine is funkier…lol ) and get thee to flirting with this darkness thang…send $10.99 to the following address and you too can…..ooops!!!..
( try to imagine the sound of the classic vinyl record screeching to a halt for extra dramatic effect…lol )…got carried away there ( but seriously folks, please don’t send me money….this is a little thing we call tongue in cheek…hmmm!!! then again this might just be my ticket…naw!! Forget it…lol )
Ever notice how when someone catches wind of your human failings they may harass you here and there but they stop short of “destroying” you? To these mouth-breathers you are basically not “worth” destroying. Hell, society even whips up all its resources to try to help your sorry ass…
But God forbid you should humbly aim to be the best human you can be…watch how people assume you are hiding something…that there is a deeper, darker evil crawling inside you…observe how they then take it upon themselves to get at what is “truly” there as they rip you apart in order to find “it”.
Once they’ve destroyed you, they then conclude that you were destroyable and therefore they were righteous in destroying you in the first place. Weird and twisted logic isn’t it? ( whew!!! that was a load off my mind, next thing you know I’ll be telling you about my mother…)
Continue this stream of thought, and next thing you know hordes of orc-like creatures will be roaming the countryside looking to destroy all that is good in this world. And where would that leave us?
Conformity. Complacency. The presence of self-serving mediocrity.
Ever notice how given a choice between helping someone who truly could use our compassion as opposed to helping someone who doesn’t really need anything, the overwhelming majority will help those that don’t need help.
Does this make sense?
Actually it does, if you understand the nature of universal principles. You see, we all want to be part of a winning team and at the same time we all have self-serving fears. If I help the one who needs help, I am giving something away and I fear that I may not have enough left over for me. Whereas if I help the one that doesn’t need anything, then I might just possibly get something out of it.
Let’s take an institutional structure that we have established and accept by our very complacency. Ask yourself if a person would go to a bank to ask for a loan who truly, desperately needed it, would the bank be more likely to give it to them, or to the rich person coming in for the same pile of coin? No brainer, right?
Banks are not charities, they are in the business of making money, so given the choice of person “A” who offers the promise of risk as opposed to person “B” who offers the probability of profit take a wild frickin’ guess which way the winds will blow.
It’s not my place nor my desire to judge whether this phenomenon is good or bad. This is of course a monumental waste of time and energy and worse of all, not “useful”.
But it is essential to observe and remark the existence of this reality when pursuing one’s dreams.
So right about now, I somehow feel that I’ve jumped into the proverbial deep end and got covered in enigma ( yechhh!!! )…What am I trying to say?…Beats me…but I am curiously reminded that the humble doughnut is defined by the absence of dough ( or whatever it is that it is made of…hell I don’t eat that shit…I just makes analogies…lol )…
The void gives form and structure to the entity we ( some? ) love to ingest and recognize as a “doughnut” ( think of “mini me” when reading this, a sort of poor man’s version of putting on 3-d glasses at certain key scenes in a movie…)
And on that note, I leave you with a few smatterings of void:
The key concept in flirting with darkness is that you flirt with it, there is a difference between flirting and sleeping with the little bugger…
Remember to retain the intent of good; the dark wrapper is there as a decoy to the small minded who are out there to destroy, add a grain of salt and voila…you are now ready to begin Flirting with Darkness. Come on, you can do it…you know you wanna…
Essentially, one has to borrow from darkness if one is to conquer darkness.
Moouuuaaahhhhhaa….
Stay tuned, more to come…
Ciao for now,
Leonardo de Luca
artist-entrepreneur coach
P.S. No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog…Butttt… an entire bottle of
red wine was polished off in the midwifing of these assorted soupçons of
syllables and vowels…
P.S.S. Special thanks to Jenni for egging me on to blog
( hmmm!!! Would that make her a “blegger”…just putting it out there…lol )
check out her beautiful poems and profile…
Flirting with Darkness
December 2007 
Leonardo
Access: Public
