by Paul Ruth

Created on: May 08, 2008

What is it about the night that interest people into curiosity? What is it about the night that cause the type of fear in people that forces them to go an look what made that sound. The very aspect of not knowing leads us to a longing to know. Darkness does this to people. We expect light. We expect there to be something when we look. Why? because it is comforting to know, so we expect to know. We expect to be comforted because it is the most natural state a person can be in. The thing is, what makes night so uncomfortable is not that we do not know, it is that we know that we cannot know. The absence of something strikes at the core of what we fear the most, the not being able to know.

Very few people ever explore the night where there is no night. People may go out to night clubs, or to look at the stars, but there is always the ability to see. Either that, or we have people that are close by. Not many people ever go camping alone. The thing that is so strange though, is that the thing that we fear the most is the same thing that leads us to what we love the most, each other. When people are out of their comfort zone they seek two things; one, to get back to their comfort zone and two, to look for people who are in the same situation. Being in communities does exactly that. Having numbers around us makes us feel more secure, more confident, and this is comforting. The night is really an exercise in finding our comfort zone.

How does the become so interesting to so many? Well, the thing is about human nature is that we always strive to control, which gives us comfort. We look for that sound because we want to control that sound. We want to control the night. How do we control the night? By knowing everything about it. But if we know that we cannot know then, how does this lead us to comfort? It is the pursuit. The wanting to know is more important than the knowing itself because you have to want to know in order to know. This is what leads us to great ideas and inventions and discoveries. The wanting to know is more powerful than what you know.

The night in the end can act as a symbol for our own quest to fill the darkness with in our intellect. The night causes so much interest because it strikes at the core of what it means to be human, to know that we do not know. The night is the physical natural thing that both sparks our intellect and scares it. Fear can be the greatest motivator whether we know it or not. The night is a fear which we conquer both in a quest and among each other.

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