Heart of Darkness

Going into the interminable jungle of life, a savage society awaits and watches your every step, breath, and utterance. Death wafts in from every direction, always weary of sickness and pain on each path trod and nervous with every call to deck that you might not return. A haze of darkness goes before us, follows behind us, and eventually becomes us. The heart is the gate to our soul and when it is plagued and harangued with continual darkness, it is only a matter of time before one final struggle and push by the darkness engulfs the soul, hopes, dreams, passions, the good along with the bad. It is all swallowed up in a black hole.
Going into Conrad's Congo is not so hard for me to imagine. Not only imagine, but actually walking in the jungle, drinking in the emptiness that surrounded life there. Conrad's Congo is not unlike daily life for some.
A suffusing comment I read takes in stride the universality of the life experience, despite surroundings, situations, etc. I can't find the reference exactly, but he says something along the lines of how work tests us, reveals to us what and who we really are, or at least what we may gain from hard work.
It's true. It is when we are tested in our finest and most delicate faculties to produce something that is desirable by another party, we come to realize what we are currently capable of, what we are potentially capable of, and what we are not capable of. And if we find we are not capable of something, we find that we are capable of turning what we are not capable of into something that we are.
There is potential among the heart of darkness. Largely, there is great knowledge and potential wisdom to churn in the heart of darkness into something desirable and necessary. Never be ungrateful for a moment to walk in Conrad's jungle, which is our jungle. Never for a moment shun the opportunity to walk into the darkest jungle of your heart, for it will see you wiser, albeit weaker in some faculties, to gain better worlds like it in different spheres.