If you find the world confusing, frightening and filled with darkness, you are not alone. As we see more darkness and feel more despair, this is a sign that actually there is much more light being generated! Sounds strange? Well, Chassidus tells us that before Moshiach comes, as we get closer and closer to the revelation of Moshiach, when the world will be filled with a new sublime light and we will experience a huge revelation of G-dliness and kedusha, we will experience the greatest appearance of so called “darkness”. Because the light is concealed. Truth is more concealed. We have to dig harder to find it. But it is there. If there would not be a lot of light, there would not be a lot of darkness. G-d created one thing opposite the other, to make a balance. So when you see more darkness, more impurity, you can be sure there is also more purity and light being generated at the same time in the world. That is why we can see great extremes: tremendous holiness and goodness and acts of kindness as well as the lowest depraved acts of terrorism, Hashem yirachem. People often find themselves feeling really confused…wondering about basic things that in the past they never had difficulty believing in. How could such a phenomenon happen? How is it that pious religious Jews actually could be questioning basics of their faith? How is it that doubts pop into peoples minds? How is it that basic qualities of life are questioned? That morality is no longer clear cut like in the past? G-d has not changed. Torah has not changed? Neither have our obligations….neither has our spiritual make up. So what has changed? Only the fact that the truth is more hidden from us….more covered over so we don’t feel it or sense it as much. That is a result of the darkness of galus. When we get to that point, that level of really feeling we understand nothing and feeling that the world is no longer clear and bright and there is a huge amount of confusion prevailing….then we simply have to hang on harder to the truth, cleave to Torah and do more mitzvoth and generate more light to dispel the darkness. The forces of darkness and unholiness strive harder to disturb our service to G-d because they sense their end is near when the spirit of impurity will be removed from the earth. Hence they try harder to gain some life force from us…something to keep them going. We have to simply stand strong, say no to darkness, no to confusion and cleave to light. We have to beg G-d to have mercy on us and protect us and to strengthen our faith and our inner light. And with that we can rise from the lowest levels and achieve true purity and holiness. WE can reveal the inner light within each of our souls. We can dispel our inner darkness and the outer darkness of the world. We can bring Moshiach! We can make it happen. By seeing darkness we can laugh, as Rabbi Akiva did when he saw the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, because he knew that the rest of the prophecies would also come true. Same way, as we see darkness rampant, we can laugh knowing a better world is around the corner.