A Story About Darkness, Observation, and the Myth of Change

Earlier today, someone asked me:

“How can I change this part of me that I don’t like?”

I told her something that has become a hard-earned truth in my own life:

“How long have you been trying to change this pattern?”

She replied: “Twelve years.”

Twelve years of struggling, pushing, trying to force an internal shift that never fully arrives.

But why?
Is it because she’s incapable?
Or is it because we misunderstand the nature of change itself?

This question stayed with me.
It echoed inside as I, too, found myself caught in a familiar loop: trying to become more, trying to escape the uncomfortable weight of simply existing.

I tried to contain it, suppress it, intellectualize it—anything but allow it to unfold naturally.

The Myth of Constant Growth

What I realized, as the days passed, is something most of us in the modern world have forgotten:

We worship the myth of constant growth.

We are conditioned to believe we must always improve, optimize, hustle, and transcend ourselves.
To stay still is to fail.

But life doesn’t move in straight lines.
Nature grows in spirals, in seasons, in cycles of rise and retreat, expansion and contraction.

The wave crashes… only to pull back into the ocean.
So too does our inner life ebb and flow.

And in that retreat, I found myself face-to-face with something rarely spoken of:
the darkness.

Darkness Is Not the Enemy

There’s something about darkness that grants me a sense of gravity, of seriousness toward life.
I’ve always loved the color black—not simply as a stylistic preference, but because it symbolizes something deeper.

Black is neutral. Silent. Vast.
It’s the color we wear in mourning, not just to honor the dead, but to honor death itself—this unknowable presence that walks beside us all.

Death is the great mirror. We fear it, despite never having truly experienced it.
And yet... the only moment we will fully “experience” death is the one in which we won’t come back.
Ironically, it’s only in facing this final absence that life reveals its rawest presence.

But darkness is more than mourning.
It’s also the name we give to what we hide.

The Parts We Exile

Darkness is the inner world we silence when we step into public.

It’s the envy we deny.
The insecurity we mask.
The compulsive comparison we dress up as ambition.
It’s the lie we told last week.
The day we did nothing and then hated ourselves for it.

It’s the quiet feeling that maybe—just maybe—there is something wrong with us.

But none of this is wrong.
It’s just what we’ve learned to exile.

And what we exile… rules us from the shadows.

Who Said We Should Change?

But here’s the deeper question:

Why do we want to change that thing in the first place?

Why is the part we hate something that needs to be changed?
Who said something has to change?

Was it a philosopher?
A prophet?
A marketing campaign?

Socrates asked us to examine life — not necessarily to change, but to live with awareness.
Christianity brought the idea of sin and redemption — that we are born flawed and must improve to be worthy.
Modern psychology and self-help turned it into a constant upgrade loop: Be better. Do more. Evolve.

Even Buddhism — often misunderstood — doesn’t say “change.”
It says: see clearly. — Observation is not a technique. It's a shift in how you relate to what arises. This matters.
Drop identification.
Let things be what they are.

So maybe the problem isn’t that we need to change…
but that we were told we should in the first place.

Sit With It

So what now?

If the darkness isn’t something to be “fixed”…
If our desire to change is itself a conditioned response…
Then what do we do with all that we are?

Here’s the quiet invitation I’ve found:

Don’t change it.
Sit with it.
Stay.

Stay with the part of you that trembles when you're alone.
Stay with the urge to run, to fix, to numb.
Stay with the shame, the envy, the need to compare.
Not to feed it — but to feel it, without turning it into a story.

What if the parts of you that you want to change
are not problems to solve,
but fragments waiting to be seen?

What if your sadness doesn’t need a cure?
What if your anger isn’t something to “calm,” but a messenger that’s been silenced too long?

What if the darkness… is not a defect,
but a doorway?

Not everything inside you is meant to be improved.
Some things are meant to be met — with breath, with presence, with stillness.

Integration is not becoming someone else.
It’s remembering you were never broken in the first place.

How I Learned to Stay

But I didn’t arrive at this by reading a quote or repeating a mantra.
I got here by walking through the very darkness I used to run from.

Let me take you back.

To be continued...

How I Found Meditation (and What It Actually Taught Me)

I didn’t discover meditation through a yoga retreat or a mindfulness app.
It came to me during a silent collapse.

I was 20 when I left Peru and moved to Ireland alone.
No family. No friends.
Just me, the cold, and the weight of starting a life from zero.

I spent my days washing dishes, exhausted, in silence.
I spent my nights with existential questions I couldn’t escape:

“What is the point of all this?”
“Why am I here?”

But those weren’t spiritual questions.
They were painful ones.
The kind of questions that burn quietly in the bones.
The kind that don’t want answers — they want escape.

I didn’t want to die. But I also didn’t want to live.
So I stopped doing anything.
I shut down.
I went still for so long, my body ached from the weight of inertia.

And oddly, that’s when the curiosity began.

From Nihilism to Inquiry

In the void, I started reading.
Philosophy. Buddhism. Neuroscience.
Not to look wise, not to feel smart — just to survive.

I found meditation.
At first, I approached it like I approached everything else:
with effort, with discipline, with the hope that I would finally become better.

I sat. I breathed. I tried to stop thinking.
It worked — until it didn’t.
Eventually, I dropped the practice. I told myself I didn’t need it.

But life has a strange way of reminding you what you’ve buried.

Years later, after overworking myself, after pushing beyond the edge, I broke again.
But this time it wasn’t quiet.

The Panic That Woke Me Up

Around 23, I started experiencing chronic panic attacks.
One night, my body felt hijacked by something I couldn’t explain —
a rush of adrenaline, racing heart, shallow breath, tunnel vision.
The fear was immediate, primal.

And then came the voice:

“It’s happening again.”
“You’re not okay.”
“You’ll never escape this.”

Thoughts feeding fear.
Fear feeding thoughts.
A loop.

But this time, I had seen this pattern before.
I had already touched, just barely, that space of silence during meditation.
And in that moment, I didn’t run.

I paused.

And I asked:

“What if I don’t fix this?”
“What if I don’t fight it?”
“What if I just… watch?”

What I Saw Changed Everything

I began to observe — not spiritually, not as a technique, but out of necessity.
Because nothing else worked.

And what I saw was this:

My body was reacting.
But my mind was narrating.

The body said: “I’m tense.”
The mind shouted: “You’re dying.”

These were not the same.
And neither one was me.

This separation — this moment of distance —
wasn’t detachment. It was clarity.

The Power of Attention

I began to treat my thoughts like texts being whispered behind me.
I didn’t chase them.
I didn’t suppress them.
I read them — like noise drifting through a radio.

And then I’d return to what was in front of me:
the floor, the breath, the texture of the air.
Not with control, not with force — just attention.

And in that attention… the story lost its weight.

I didn’t stop the thoughts.
I just stopped believing them.

Not as a practice.
As a response to life.

I Didn’t Heal — I Just Stopped Running

The panic stopped.
Not immediately.
But over time — as I watched, as I stayed, as I breathed —
it simply faded.

Not because I “healed” it.
Not because I learned to “master my mind.”
But because I saw through the illusion that I was the one broken in the first place.

There was nothing to fix.
Just a loop of identification that had been running without question.

Final Words (For Now)

So here’s what I know now:

You don’t have to fix yourself.
You don’t even have to meditate.
You don’t need to become someone else.

Just sit.
Just breathe.
Just watch.

There is a part of you — silent, spacious —
that sees everything without judgment.
Some call it soul. Others spirit, the universe, the beyond… God.
You feel it inside — something that goes beyond understanding.
You don’t need to explain it.
You just know it exists.
And that part of you…
isn’t broken.
It never was.

And maybe… just maybe…
That part is who you truly are.

Before You Go…

So let me ask you:

What part of you have you been trying to fix…
that might just be waiting to be seen?

Not judged.
Not explained.
Just seen — as it is.

Maybe that’s where real transformation begins.
Not in changing.
But in staying.

And then…
you can be at peace with that.
Let it be.
Breathe.
Stay.

Don’t treat yourself like a problem.
Just make space for peace.

And in that peace — in that silence —
a new door might open.
And if life wants...
transformation can begin.

For Marlen -
who asked the question that opened this reflection,
and for everyone carrying a part of themselves they’ve been taught to hide.
May you find the courage not to fix… but to see.

— Love you