Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s famous novella “Heart of Darkness” is about what happens to a person’s heart, outlook, and character when they are surrounded by dark, unethical, and hopeless environments. It is a story-within-a-story by an unnamed narrator.

The book suggests that a person with a good quality of heart can become trapped, horrorified, and even a facilitator of evil if they allow themselves to remain in poor environments.

The heart of darkness is not necessarily a heart that is sinful by nature or dark at its core. Rather, the best of hearts can become darkened when they reside in environments that are poorly lit, poorly illuminated, or poorly enlightened.

For some people, a key realization is not simply that they should improve the quality of their heart, but in order to do so they may need to improve the quality of their environments (plural).

For many people, one characteristic of an environment that can make it dark is the inability to remove yourself from that one environment. It is not so much that the environment is dark, but rather the inability to ever remove yourself from it could make most any environment darker.

My father has not been very good with some traditional relationship roles. The older I became, the more I realized this was probably because he had experienced the genuinely unique and beautiful characteristics of various intimate environments. And for him, I think at some point he realized his best bet was not to place all his hopes (and that burden) onto one other person to try to create one environment that would meet all their needs. For him, as best I understand him, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand him, he reasoned that a better way to live might be living regularly in separate environments at different intervals.

Some artists can paint, draw, or photograph themselves out of their dark places. I have rarely been able to do that.

For me, more often I’ve been able to read, to listen, to think, to write, and to share my way out of dark environments. For me, this blog is a separate environment (a separate world) I’ve created apart from my daily environments. It is a place I go to shine lights against darknesses. However, in the real world, I rarely attempt to similarly shine for others.

It is not true that a person can only be as good as their environment. But it is probably true that our environment can greatly deter the degree, the frequency, and the ways we can be good.

Some artists who realize they are living in dark environments escape into other environments by reading, by submerging into their work, or by acting (the activity of becoming someone different in a different reality). Art for them is not so much ”escapist” as it is a healthy escape. They are creating and inhabiting better worlds than the real worlds that confine them.

For some of us, “darkness” is the absence of a light we once experienced. And no amount of other wonderful lights will remove that memory. When we close our eyes, that visual rememberance often comes to mind.

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