Does the news leave you feeling like darkness is overtaking the world? If so, here’s a lesson from an unlikely source: astronomy (and, no, I don’t mean astrology).

Today’s Equinox might have a message for us. The word Equinox originates from the Latin “aequus” meaning equal and “nox” meaning night. Our forebearers got it right: Two days a year the Sun and Earth align in a way to theoretically, at least, result in night and day being equally long.

Today is one of those days. Earth is transitioning from leaning back as if relaxing to forward as if bowing to the Sun. All of March 20th, 2025, our planet has either zero or near-zero tilt. This upright alignment means that the Sun’s rays hit Earth straight on, lighting up exactly half of both its northern and southern hemispheres. Thus, 12 of the 24 time zones are in the dark at any given time.

But there’s a twist. Despite darkness being set up to be as long-lived as light today, it won’t be. It will underperform relative to its bright opposite everywhere on Earth, typically by about 5-20 minutes. How is this possible? How can light defy the geometrically determined outcome? The principal reason is that, on our planet, light bends. It’s always turning corners, as if intending to banish neighboring darkness. It wraps around Earth and takes over some of the night. Scientists call this property refraction. Earthly darkness, by comparison, can’t refract, bend or do much of anything. It’s like dead weight.

Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but I’m uplifted knowing that light has a modest advantage over darkness. Might today’s Equinox be whispering to us? “Listen up weary Earthlings, darkness exists only when there’s no nearby light. Hint. Hint.”

What do you think? Do I sound deranged or might today’s Equinox teach us something?