October 26, 2025
There’s something reassuring about knowing that no night lasts forever. Victor Hugo’s words are simple, but they hit like a sunrise after a sleepless night: even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.
You don’t have to be an optimist to believe that. You just have to have lived long enough to know that pain has an expiration date. Grief softens. Fear fades. The worst days eventually become stories you tell from a safer distance.
Still, when you’re in the darkness, it doesn’t feel temporary. It feels endless. Like maybe this time, the light won’t come back. You tell yourself you’ve been here before and survived, but that logic doesn’t help much when you can’t see the way out.
But the thing about the sun is, it doesn’t need your permission to rise. It shows up anyway. Whether you feel ready for it or not.
Sometimes “hope” gets dressed up like it’s supposed to be loud and heroic. But the truth is, hope is quieter. It’s you dragging yourself out of bed when you don’t want to. It’s the coffee brewing, the kids laughing in the next room, the tiny spark that whispers, “maybe today will be okay.”
Hugo understood something about cycles. That light and dark aren’t enemies, they’re partners. You can’t have one without the other. Every sunrise owes its beauty to the night that came before it.
If you’re in a dark place right now, don’t rush the sunrise. Let the night do its work. There’s strength that grows in the quiet, and patience that builds in the waiting. When the sun does rise, and it will, you’ll be different for having seen both sides of the sky.
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