It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

The Cost of Having Known Light

We all know the particular sting of loss—how much worse it feels to lose something good than to never have had it at all. A relationship that ends leaves a sharper wound than loneliness ever did. A dream you almost reached hurts more than a dream you never dared to chase. Steinbeck captures something real here: the presence of light makes the darkness that follows feel deeper and more absolute.

But there's something else worth noticing. This isn't really an argument against letting light into your life. It's actually a testament to how much the light mattered. The darkness only feels darker because you remember brightness. That comparison, painful as it is, proves the light was real and significant. A completely dark life never learns what it's missing.

The trick is accepting that this vulnerability—this capacity to miss what was good—is the price of having had it at all. The harder part is realizing that even knowing this, most of us would still choose to let the light in. We'd rather feel that particular darkness than never know the difference.