LIGHT & DARK, LEVITY & DEPTH

Why stick to one octave when you can play the whole keyboard?

There is something special about spaces where light and dark intermingle.

Peer support groups are good examples of this.

Amidst the darkness of shared struggles, someone can say something funny and suddenly everyone is laughing. It’s like a ray of brilliant sunlight breaking through storm clouds¹.

From my experience, the more time a group spends together, the more often these light moments tend to occur. Before long, we might spend equal time talking about what is good and what is difficult. This could seem inappropriate for a group whose purpose is to be there for the dark times, but I think it is a good sign. It means the group is reflecting the bittersweet nature of reality.

As Susan Cain puts it, the ‘bittersweet’ is:

“the recognition that light and dark, birth and death - bitter and sweet - are forever paired. “Days of honey, days of onion,” as an Arabic proverb puts it. The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor.” (Cain, 2022, p.xxiii)²

Spaces that allow both light and dark welcome the totality of a person’s experience, rather than just one side of it.

A similar effect can occur in more lighthearted spaces, when darkness is allowed to emerge.

Often this is down to one individual being willing to go first. A friend of mine told me about a reunion dinner where this happened to him. Initially, conversation revolved around everyone’s respective successes:

• Getting promoted

• Having a baby

• Finishing a PhD

• Travelling the world

My friend, who had recently been through a divorce, health crisis, and various family challenges, decided to throw caution to the wind and be honest. He shared what was really going on in his life. He said that upon hearing his struggles, it was as if the rest of the table breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly everyone opened up about their respective struggles:

• Finding work overwhelming

• Having a baby and finding it much more challenging than expected

• Trying to have a baby and it not happening

• Questioning the purpose of their 7 years of PhD research

• Being unrequitedly in love

By the end of the evening, the group felt more connected and affectionate than they’d thought possible. By sharing real darkness, they all felt less alone with this inevitable side of life.

In my opinion, one of the best things about THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN PUBS (TEiP) events is their capacity to contain both light and dark.

In exploring thought experiments (imaginary scenarios), I’ve heard people talk about the things they love most in life, but also about their most challenging times. Their openness is impressive and contagious.

While this is mostly down to participants’ bravery and generosity, there are a few things that I think encourage such sharing:

• The absence of strict rules, enabling people to improvise freely in their conversations

• Introductory remarks that establish the group norm of respect for one another’s time and opinions

• The assurance that: “if, for any reason, a topic comes up that you’d rather not talk about today, you are free to move tables. No questions asked. We all have good reasons for avoiding particular topics, there is no need to explain.”³

• And a final note on the atmosphere, which I include in every event description: “While we’d like to talk about ‘meaningful things’, we also see the value in lighter topics, so don’t worry about not being ‘deep’ enough!”⁴

I think these invitations give people both the freedom and the support to navigate conversations very organically. To improvise using the full range of light to dark and to be comfortable with both levity and depth.

The sentence, “Don’t worry about not being ‘deep’ enough!”, is one of the details I’ve received most feedback about over the past three years of facilitating TEiP.

Participants have told me that it was that sentence that gave them the confidence to come along to their first ‘philosophy meetup’⁵.

From my experience, prescribing depth (i.e. saying “this is a place for deep conversations only”) can introduce both pressure and pretentiousness. Some people worry that conversations will be too heavy or intellectual for them. Others try to ‘out-deep’ one another with lots of intellectual references and niche knowledge. Neither of these dynamics lead to very good conversations.

On the other hand, occasions where depth is deliberately avoided can feel stilted and disappointing.

I value small talk and agree with the Samaritans campaign: “Small talk saves lives”, but I find being limited to small talk very stifling. Contrary to the stereotypical university experience, where students are imagined sitting around having mind opening conversations about life’s big questions, my experience included a great deal of small talk (mostly about hangovers and gossip) and the deliberate avoidance of depth.

Whenever my best friend (who was a philosophy student) would ask an off the wall question that threatened to deepen a conversation, our housemates would say “she’s going down the rabbit hole again”, laugh fondly, and change the subject. At the time, I didn’t really know what philosophy was; I just knew that she was the most interesting person to talk to. I wish we’d explored her questions more seriously.

So in addition to “don’t worry about being deep enough”, I’d like to add “don’t feel ashamed about going down the rabbit hole”.

Thankfully people at TEiP seem quite happy to go down the rabbit hole and, like my friend, they do it without taking themselves too seriously. But I think this is a good invitation for other events where people might feel reticent to go deep.

If conversation is improvisation⁶, talking about the light and the dark, with depth and with levity, is like playing the full range of notes on an instrument. Opportunities to play like this enable us to become more adept and more free. The more we practice, the more effortlessly we’ll jam together: navigating wide-ranging topics, connecting with each other’s experiences, and reflecting on the full, bittersweet picture of what it means to be a human. And hopefully, we’ll have more fun doing it!

I’d love to hear about more spaces where both sincerity and triviality are welcome, where silliness and seriousness can coexist. If you have examples to share, please do so either in the comments or by DM :-)

My next newsletter will be out tomorrow, so if you’d like to receive it, please:

And if you like symbolism: The Spring Equinox, which marks the moment when day and night (light and dark) are perfectly balanced, is coming up. We will be celebrating it at THE SUNRISE CLUB and you are invited to join us :-).

1. A laugh can be just as cathartic as a sob.

2. Cain, S. (2022). Bittersweet: How sorrow and longing make us whole. Crown.

3. From my opening remarks at each TEiP event.

4. From my event descriptions on meetup, for example: this upcoming event.

5. I usually describe TEiP as philosophy-adjacent as the discussions are not restricted to philosophical techniques. TEiP is a place for “doing” philosophy insofar as it is about questioning and imagining, but I’d say our conversations are more creative than logical or structured. I think people come for many different reasons. Personally, I enjoy getting to know other people’s ways of thinking far more than trying to tease out an answer to any of the questions I pose.

6. I like Stephen Nachmanovitch’s description of all speech being improvisation and all conversation jazz: “When we think of improvisation, we tend to think first of improvised music or theatre or dance; but beyond their own delights such art forms are doors into an experience that constitutes the whole of everyday life. We are all improvisers. The most common form of improvisation is ordinary speech. As we talk and listen, we are drawing on a set of building blocks (vocabulary) and rules for combining them (grammar). These have been given to us by our culture. But the sentences we make with them may never have been said before and may never be said again. Every conversation is a form of jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.” Nachmanovitch, S. (1990). Free play: Improvisation in life and art. J. P. Tarcher; distributed by St. Martin’s Press. p.17