Black Friday

As funny as it is, it was only yesterday when I learnt what this Black Friday is about. I received this email from a massively popular online retailer telling me to celebrate the Black Friday by getting those amazing bargains on their website. I actually went and read a little bit about this Black Friday thing and it wasn’t without a tragic disappointment to find out that such magically beautiful name has been abused as a name for a day marking the massive pre-Christmas sales and discounts. Apparently this is the fourth year of celebrating Black Friday in the UK and I’m wondering why I haven’t realized what’s happening the day after Thanksgiving earlier. Not that I think I missed too much by not knowing about it.

I complained about this to my friend, who asked me how I am today and in response, she asked me how would I imagine Black Friday then? This got me thinking.

I’m sorry if this sounds funny, but I would want to celebrate the day called Black Friday by doing something riskier than witnessing some stressed out bargain hunters fighting over no name HD TV in an overcrowded supermarket. I imagined the black in the name of this (in my mind) beautiful holiday day representing the blackness of our own souls, the beasts within ourselves. The fears slumbering in the darkest depths of our hearts. The queen mother of all our despair and torment. And we would be celebrating this day by conscious efforts to go into this blackness of ourselves carrying only the little light of hope, completely unarmed.

I’m reading this book about ultra-long distance running and there’s this girl who’s looking forward seeing the beast, which is how she describes the moment when she gets to the point of almost unbearable exhaustion. But there’s still so much of the track ahead. So how does she beat this beast? Well, with love, with embracing it like a long lost friend. I’m not a runner at all (although I can feel I’m getting excited about it deep in my heart), but I can totally see her coming to this huge black beast, as calm as one can be facing the power so primeval, so old, so beyond human imagination, realizing that only an act of absolute and purest courage can save her. And what is more powerful than love? It must be an amazing view to see someone coming back from such battle. And this is what I would imagine being the center of Black Friday. After giving thanks for everything nice in our lives, we will be going down to the darkness of our souls to greet our demons. I have read many stories of people finding the most beautiful light within the blackest places of their hearts, during their darkest days. Now of course nearly none of them have brought this kind of battle upon themselves willingly. They didn’t plan it. It just happened. They have been thrown into it by whoever, whatever is behind our seemingly chaotic universal laws. Was it a blessing, was it a course? I think it’s up to each of us what we make it when we face it. So without pushing it too far, on Black Friday we should go just a bit further into our darkness, do something daring, courageous, bold. Say something we have been afraid to say, try to find something beautiful in something we loathe, do something nice for someone we don’t like too much, who we might even hate. I’m not sure if this is what you would imagine being the center of today’s day if you never heard of Black Friday before, but this is how I would like it to be.

Couple of months ago I started to write a short story about “something that wasn’t”. It would be a minimalistic comic story and I can use its end to show that even the blackness can make us smile if we let it to be a part of us, without fighting it like an enemy.

The unlikely hero of my story is represented by a totally uncool full black circle.

It wanders through the vast land of pure white feeling lost, abandoned.

Until finally

.

.

.

it finds its place.

Before it finally returns to where it belongs a kind of a smile appears …

And after that.

Only

black

nothing

exists.

It’s very minimalistic, almost non existing story, but I somehow wanted to share it with you today, on Black Friday, reminding you all, that even blackness deserves its place in our lives.

And although it might seem,that I have taken it harsh on celebrating today hunting bargains, I would like to tell you that if that made you happy, so be it.

Happy Black Friday everyone.