I read an excerpt from the Roland Garros women’s final about Maja Chwalińska. It ended, “… in the midst of darkness, light persists.” It was in reference to her suffering depression.

It prompted me to ponder – are light and dark polar opposites, or is there something more to it?

There are at least three ways to answer that question.

The everyday answer is yes. Light and dark are opposites. We navigate the world this way. Day and night. Visible and invisible. On and off. In practical terms, the distinction works.

The scientific answer is a little different. Darkness is not really a “thing” in the same way light is. Light is electromagnetic radiation. Darkness is what we call the absence of detectable light. In physics, darkness is not an opposing force pushing against light. It is a condition.

The philosophical or metaphysical answer is that light and darkness may not be the deepest distinction at all.

If darkness is understood as the unmanifest, the void, the field of potential, then light is not its opposite. Light is an expression arising from it. Just as a wave is not the opposite of the ocean, manifestation is not the opposite of potential.

This is why many traditions begin in darkness:

• In the opening of Genesis, darkness is upon the face of the deep before light appears.
• In Taoist thought, the nameless precedes the named.
• In many cosmologies, creation emerges from a primordial void or chaos.
• In these framings, darkness is not competing with light. It is prior to light.

The interesting question then becomes:

If light requires darkness to be perceived, but darkness does not require light to exist conceptually, are they truly opposites?

A candle needs darkness to reveal itself. A star needs the night sky. Contrast makes light visible.

Perhaps what we call “light and dark” are polar opposites within the manifested world, while both arise from a deeper ground that is neither light nor dark.

Not light versus darkness, but a deeper source from which both emerge. the conversation begins to shift from polarity to origin.