(stay with me – I’ll try not to butcher this…)
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
from Plato’s Republic, written 380 B.C.
(keeping it fresh and up to the minute)
It goes like this:
Some prisoners are spending their lives in a cave, chained up, facing the wall and they can’t turn around.
They get all their knowledge from the shadows the fire behind them throws on the wall.
So when things pass behind and make shadows… they try to work out what the things are, like dogs and trees swaying and so on.
One day, a prisoner is unchained and goes outside to see the ACTUAL reality.
His mind is blown.
Actual trees, not shadows of trees.
WTAF.
3D.
Colours.
Landscape.
The Sea
CLOUDS!!!
(clouds blow my mind at the best of times and I’ve seen loads of them)
So he runs back to untie them and tell them all about reality.
They thought he had gone mad, was totally wrong and wanted nothing to do with this so-called ‘truth’.
In fact, it made them FURIOUS at them – to tell them everything they knew, and the way they were living, was wrong.
So they stayed as they were looking at the shadows and complaining about their handcuffs and how sore their shoulders are (hot topic in that cave).
And this is how it is when you realise YOU want to live differently.
When you look at people around you that operate a certain way, eat a certain way, live a certain way… that you know isn’t what you want.
When you know that drinking half a bottle of wine every night – but aren’t ‘an alcoholic and functioning fine’.
Who spend hours on social media every day ‘but haven’t got time to exercise’.
Who spend £30 a week on takeaways – but haven’t got money to eat healthily.
Who throw money at slimming clubs with a super low success rate at getting people slim, and a high success rate at making people feel bad.
Who say they want to live a better life, don’t change the fundamentals and still complain.
You can stay in the cave arguing with them/trying to persuade them to join you – or just step out into the light and start living in the sunshine.
The truth is: you setting goals, wanting more, doing the things that move you forward, wanting life to be in technicolour… will make people try to keep you with them in their cave.
Or get cross with you when you don’t.
Just because they aren’t right – that DOESN’T make you wrong.
(Tanya Grant 2019 A.D)
want to spend time with people who say NO to cave-dwelling?
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