The Dark Side

​This week I have been drawn quite strongly to my garden. While there I am either weeding, transplanting, or laying down mulch; and as I'm weeding I'm thinking to myself "how on earth do these marvelous plants make food for us and energy for themselves?" 

Slowly, biology classes from college freshman days trickle back from the recesses of memory and I recall the dark phase of photosynthesis.

YES!!  That's it.  EUREKA.  There is a value and a purpose to the dark side after all. 

It turns out that during the light phase of photosynthesis the plants turn C02 and Water into carbohydrates and oxygen and in the dark phase they form energy molecules (ATP and NADPH) to drive the daytime reactions.  

Light and Dark.   Two forces at work in opposite areas.  One goal. 

I began to wonder about humans.  Could we be like plants.  Maybe we too have a dark and a light side to our "reactions."  And maybe in the long run -- in the long arc of history -- these forces are all working toward a common goal.  

This period we are in, this dark and divisive period, might just be a "dark phase reaction" and it is needed to bring the required energy molecules into being to create a more perfect union. 

I pull a weed.  I imagine that if I get rid of this weed and its companions my potatoes will grow better.   Is that true?  I don't know.  I look in nature and I see all kinds of species sharing common ground, common light, common nutrients -- they seem to be getting along.  

Going forward ... I'm going to embrace the "dark side" and see if I can find the energy molecules that are moving me forward ... that may be moving all of us forward.  

How about you? 

Here are my queries for today: 

• Where are there dark reactions supporting the whole? 
• Where do the light and the dark meet? 
• How does the dark support the light? 
• Besides the plant kingdom, where else are these dark reactions operating and how are they in service to the whole of life?  

Joseph Olejak 

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