Enraptured, you listen to the song’s hypnotic lyrics. Every few lines there comes a phrase that strikes your mind like cold water, waking and numbing you at the same time. As the song rises to its final climax, you fall into the stream of words, allowing them to carry you away like an underground river. Vainly you strain through the dark tunnel of thought for a ray of light at the end.

And then you’re at the end, and it’s just another black wall.

Leaning back, you sigh sadly, not so much for the conclusion, as in pity for the poets’ mind. So much like “Do not go gentle into that good night” it all feels, the hopelessness makes you want to turn on a metaphorical flashlight inside that tunnel of rancorous darkness.

You pause the video at the end, and scrolling down, open up a comment box. Slowly, and with many thoughtful pauses, you type:

“Let me tell you a story. There was once a man who lived in a world very much like our own. However, unlike most of the people in his world, he did not try to smooth over its flaws with nice words and intentional ignorance. Because of this, his mind became very dark from all the darkness that he took into himself. This darkness was very heavy, and it would often drag him down, like a great burden, until he had descended into this cave beneath the earth. There, he stood inside a giant wheel, and ran up its slope, chanting to himself words, phrases and poetry that came from the darkness of his mind. Slowly, as he ran, the darkness would spin itself out of him and into the form of a page. So the man continued until he was exhausted, and collapsing within his wheel, he fell asleep, only to wake much later, back in the world above. For years this man did thus: feeding on darkness, then running his wheel to spin the darkness out again. When people asked him why he did this, he told them it was his therapy. When they asked him why his therapy never seemed to help, he asked them how they knew that. For there was no one in his world that really understood what it was like to be a poet.

Except one. One day, as he was running his wheel, there flashing past him through the underground night, another human form. His eyes followed it until it disappeared into the shadows. Then he thought no more on it. The next day, at the same time, the human form flashed by and disappeared. This became a pattern, so that the man grew less and less surprised at it reoccurrence. Until the form stopped. Beside his wheel the other human stood one day, and looked in at him as he ran and chanted. At last, she said,

‘Why are you running in circles?’

To which he replied ‘This is my therapy.’

Her expression became confused at this, and she shook her head, ‘But, running in circles isn’t therapy-’

‘It is for me.’

She paused for a minute and listened to him chant the lyrics of a new song. At last she spoke again:

‘When someone gets addicted to drugs, they have to get out of the habit by first choosing to stop using drugs, and then going through a therapy which reminds their body why they never needed drugs in the first place. After the therapy has been successful, they stop using it, and move on and no longer need such intervention because the therapy has healed them.’

‘So?’

‘Well, if this person who was addicted to drugs, instead becomes addicted to the therapy itself, then the therapy has ceased to serve its purpose. The point of therapy is not existence in it, but passing through it to meet another goal. Therapies . . . they’re like a flight of stairs. You start at the bottom and in the dark, but then you climb and as you climb everything gets brighter and brighter until you reach the top. Then the therapy has been successful and you move on. However, if your therapy only consists of running in circles, it’s not really therapy. Just another addiction.’

He questioned how she could know this. She was just like all the other people up there who didn’t get it. She smiled somewhat sadly.

‘You see me down here every day. This is because I do understand and experience a darkness very similar to yours. But you notice that I run past you and your wheel. I’m actually going somewhere. Up ahead, if you run far enough, you’ll find a stair. That’s what I run up. Both of our therapies are long, dark and lonely, but mine has a light at the end. This is true therapy – if it ends better than it began. If it doesn’t end better, then it’s not therapy. It’s addiction. No matter how good it feels, it’s not.’

She stepped forward, hand touching the wheel as it spun, ‘Therapy is moving from point A to point C through point B. If you get addicted to A and B, however, it’s not therapy anymore, and you’re just hurting yourself more than the darkness ever did before.’

‘Now I have to go,’ she said, stepping back, ‘But think about it. There’s always room for two on the stair.’”

You read, reread and re-reread this short, simple story.

Then you sigh.

And delete the comment.