The Comfort Book

Haig uses light and dark symbolically to evoke not only happiness and sadness, hope and despair, or good and evil, but also the relationship between such seeming opposites. In the same way that the shadows of a painting throw the highlights into sharper relief, figurative darkness increases one’s ability to appreciate life’s joys. By remembering that one is a precondition of the other, a person is more apt to experience hope during moments of despair. The motif thus illustrates the importance of Resisting Binary Thinking.

Haig highlights the importance of perseverance during times of despair. Perseverance is simply getting through difficult times by moving forward. Even in times of uncertainty in which one feels lost and unsure of which direction to take, it’s important to move forward in a straight line. By doing so, one will find the end of the dark forest of despair, experience the light of day, and find the road home.

Haig makes it clear that there are no preconditions to “deserve” existence. He repeats throughout the book that readers are “enough,” simply by existing in this world. No one needs to “earn” worthiness by achieving financial success, having numerous social media followers, or being physically attractive.