Hmm, I got lost at "Something shines the light back at you." I'm not following what that light is or where it came from. So in the scenario, I'm imagining that I'd feel spooked out, worried, and trying to figure out what's happening, much more so than having a sense of meaning about passing on a good story. But I guess I get the point -- that there's meaning in the experience of the magical story, even if the story itself is myth. I don't feel it though.
Fair question, David —- “something (?) shines the light back at you.”
It’s rather like discovering your eyes have “night vision”. Remember that as a kid, how venturing from the artificial light inside at night, to the outside into the dark … for several minutes, gradually transitioning from near blindness, to surprising perception of things? Venturing from the cave, we discover we are made to see in, what at first is seen as “darkness” … then what’s even cooler … the light you receive turns out to be the light that connects us, that you radiate to be reflected back.
As you rightly wrote, it's quite barren and desolate outside, until a light shines [back], and for a moment, beauty.
It's a good poem you wrote.
Maybe the "contest" was lost in ages past and the best any of us can now do is hope others find courage to let go and wander forth beyond yonder. Peers want certainty, mesmerized by cheap tricks and thrills, enthralled by those wearing shepherd mantles who know no more than they do but have not the courage of heart. It's easier to believe a lie, the more the merrier, surely everyone couldn't, wouldn't. Or maybe it's all part of the why of this experience, and the light a remembrance of what awaits after there's no more to be done and we finally lay to rest.
I've used Plato's Cave since I first read it. Here is a small collection of those writings:
https://open.substack.com/pub/alwaystoomuchbutneverenough/p/on-caves-and-reality?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=pu3ot
It's a powerful allegory indeed!
Thank you for sharing this collection and your intellectual / life memoir project :)
Hmm, I got lost at "Something shines the light back at you." I'm not following what that light is or where it came from. So in the scenario, I'm imagining that I'd feel spooked out, worried, and trying to figure out what's happening, much more so than having a sense of meaning about passing on a good story. But I guess I get the point -- that there's meaning in the experience of the magical story, even if the story itself is myth. I don't feel it though.
It's a moment when you and the world touch—without illusion, yet something beautiful passes between you.
Maybe it’s the world responding.
Maybe it’s you seeing it differently.
Maybe that’s the same thing.
Not a sun returning. Not a god descending. Just a glint, a response, enough to begin again.
Fair question, David —- “something (?) shines the light back at you.”
It’s rather like discovering your eyes have “night vision”. Remember that as a kid, how venturing from the artificial light inside at night, to the outside into the dark … for several minutes, gradually transitioning from near blindness, to surprising perception of things? Venturing from the cave, we discover we are made to see in, what at first is seen as “darkness” … then what’s even cooler … the light you receive turns out to be the light that connects us, that you radiate to be reflected back.
As you rightly wrote, it's quite barren and desolate outside, until a light shines [back], and for a moment, beauty.
It's a good poem you wrote.
Maybe the "contest" was lost in ages past and the best any of us can now do is hope others find courage to let go and wander forth beyond yonder. Peers want certainty, mesmerized by cheap tricks and thrills, enthralled by those wearing shepherd mantles who know no more than they do but have not the courage of heart. It's easier to believe a lie, the more the merrier, surely everyone couldn't, wouldn't. Or maybe it's all part of the why of this experience, and the light a remembrance of what awaits after there's no more to be done and we finally lay to rest.