I've been talking about the "shadow side" of things here and there. It's a useful turn of phrase that gets a lot of use: metaphorically you can flip the life-giving and life-sustaining properties of a given object or element under the analytical lens and in turn describe its destructive properties as traits common to the same object or element, thereby illuminating the contextuality and contingency inherent in all things.
But we can turn that very mechanism towards the concept of the "shadow side" itself. To risk leaving out what is doubtless a fascinating etymological and mythological history, we could briefly intuit the misty origins of the concept's genesis. Due to the particular evolution of our sensory array, we rely heavily on visual information - so light radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum - to navigate and to coordinate with our bodies to carry out basic daily tasks. We're talking about an average here: the blind find their own way just fine.
Similarly it is light energy that powers photosynthesis, and a majority of the earth's ecological processes. The day phase of the daily cycle is the time for a majority of the earth's living things to get moving, happily fed and at work in their daily production. The night, that all-enveloping fall of the earth's shadow, is a time for retreat from predators and the cold and the drop in production brought about by the lack of coordinating light. Again, averages: there are plenty of nocturnal species out during their thing, and species subsisting on energies emanating from sources other than the active fusion of the sun - at least, directly.
So that's where the dominant mythology comes in anyway, sustained by historical majorities and organized and sustained power: the sun and the light brings everything that is good and sustains it, while the shadows stamp out energy flows and precipitate the arrival of predation and destruction.
But even within this overarching narrative, we have concepts and meanings that are softer in relation to "shadow," such as "shade." To the desert dweller, the shade too is very much a form of sustenance, where the intense falling solar energy is deflected and where one can slow down and cool off. Even us forest dwellers seek out the shade during the summer work season with a thirst to rival that of the parched desert dweller searching out the local watering hole or seep. Your labors won't get you far under a condition of overheating.
If you leaf through a survival manual, one of the first things you will find in a section on desert survival - or survival out at sea for that matter - is to either immediately seek out shade or to construct it with what you have. Water is one of your most precious resources in any environment. And with too much sun, you're overheating, and the water is leaving you faster than you can take it in.
Anyway, I think the point has been made.
