Interesting thread. No easy answer as I tend to be a rather complexed person - who for a multitude of reasons has always preferred to keep company with shadows. From a poem I wrote - in what now seems long ago:

Shadows sway and shadows dance, in murky murky night. Shadows that spring up to peek from corners and behind things as they play hide and seek with the light of streetlamps and insipid rays of moonlight. Shadows are as shadows will be, and are not always the things we think we see. Shadows grow and shadows fade and shadows take shapes that they are not. Shadows come and shadows go - sometimes seen but never heard. Shadows are phantoms and shadows are jesters to quail the heart and make silly the mind. And shadows' favorite playground is the dark and hazy night. And eyes not accustom to shadows' play are shadows' delight. For more than all these things, shadows are mischievous. For shadows think it fun to spin their subtile forms into grotesque and dreadful shapes to tease and frighten poor unsuspecting souls. But shadows are harmless, for shadows are not real. And though shadows can be awe inspiring at night, it is not the shadows that are truly feared. Rather, the dark things that might lurk hidden within those shadows.