Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Too Much Light

"If we are blinded by darkness, we are also blinded by light. When too much light falls on everything, a special terror results."
Annie Dillard writes of this in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and goes on to tell of a kind of hypnosis experienced by Eskimo hunters in kayaks. The bright glare on water and the hours spent in motionlessness waiting for shy seals causes a kind of paralysis, in which the hunter feels swallowed up, panicked, yet unable to move.
I believe in a similar paralysis that happens to many people in today's society. In life, one must inevitably struggle to make progress, though not everyone is aware of this fact. There are many systems that can be formed to evade this inevitable reality; masters of denial, we can think of an explaination for everything. It is when reality slaps one hard in the face that the light is shown and the answer, however hard, is clear. For some who are so tangled in the web of denial, it is too unfathomable of a task to face the music and do what they must do, paralyzed by the great light.