Marriage group this week was kinda ordinary. In our check ins most people mentioned the darkness. One of us welcomes the loss of light and uses it as an incentive to hunker down at home. The rest of us wished it were not so. 

It wasn't a coordinated effort to agree, and yet I felt a kind of solidarity from it. We are, after all, in the same hemisphere, and grappling with similar constraints. Whatever the early sunset may mean, it is something we face side by side.

Then we tried something new. We picked questions from one of those plastic cubicles packed with cards designed to unleash rapid fire conversation. The first person looked at the one on top and tucked it in back with a head shake. Rejected. The next question seemed more viable. 

"How were you disciplined as a child?"

The variety of stories made us laugh, and think. One woman stole the show with her consequences. 

"I had to write 'I will not fight with my sister' fifteen hundred times."

It turns out that she does not employ similar strategies with her own kids. 

While it does take effort to pull ourselves into the blackness, across town, and into someone else's living room, it does push back any loneliness that might creep in under our own doors. 

It turns out that the feeling of connection offers its own kind of light.