One very difficult eventuality lies in the path of every person born into this life. For those who know Plato’s story of the cave at the end of The Republic. According to Plato, this world is just shadows on the wall of the cave, and the real light is behind us. We are not facing the light, but that’s the world we came from. What we see here is just shadows moving on the wall-not real substance, not real things. People talk about a never ending state of happiness. Where can we find this state, this state of never ending happiness? Can people really find in this life of never ending happiness?
We search for happiness through our lives. Some use a career to find happiness. This ends up as the slippery slide because they climb the ladder of success and the ladder slips and down comes the climber. If they get to the top what do they find? Not happiness just the pleasure of the climb. Pleasure runs out and what replaces it? Various forms of self satisfactions pushes one forward but life becomes vacant. The battle with morality and immorality continues. This is the battle of life; Morality vs. Immorality. When a person does another or himself wrong, that is immoral.
Is happiness morality or immorality?
Wordsworth’s poem tells our ability to know immoral behavior.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy
At length the Man perceives it die away
And fade him into the light of common day.
Life deals with everyone in a different way. None are the same although they might seem similar. The path a person takes becomes either good or bad and the trip can be happy or sad but no never ending happiness. So is there a place of never ending happiness?
Our search gets close when we look at families but families grow up and in this busy day and time everyone goes their own way. When it is all over what comes next? We must all die and if we don’t know what happiness is, can we find it there, after death?
Before happiness is achieved one must come to the realization every person is responsible for who they are and what they have become. One day every person has to admit they are responsible for their own lives and can’t blame parents or anyone for their own mistakes.
If a person either young or old cannot accept responsibility for life and is in the mental mode of blame, their happiness becomes the blame, but that can be never ending happiness.
They never may understand until maturity sets in, the person has to forgive and forget what has happened or what they perceived to have happened to them. Every person carries within them the inter child and that inter child has to learn to forgive.
Psychologists tell people their problems aren’t their fault. Who’s living with the problem and who created the problem? Every behavior that one might have is there for them to overcome and telling them it isn’t their fault is contagious like coffee or tobacco even drugs.
Unconditional love is very hard for some humans to learn. Everyone wants love but there seems to be a price tag attached to love. When one finally learns to have unconditional love they have traveled the long hard road of life and have learned to forgive through experience. This is a great step to the road that leads to never ending happiness.
Unconditional love applies to others but it also applies to one’s self. How and why people hate themselves or dislike who they are is one reason for so many suicides and failures in this world we live. How then do we get the correct perspective of ourselves? One must be worthy of love, even self love requires cleanliness of body and soul.
Plato gives us a hint about the light at the other end of the cave. We came from a place of light and happiness. We are here in our bodies working out our lives like shadows on the wall. We flicker and move along. Where do we go? We can return to where we came from but we must overcome the problems this life presents. Someone gave us this opportunity, what do we do with it? Our tools for our journey are our intelligence, our hope and our faith. We can overcome the obstacles of life with the tools given us from the source of the all light. We must work out our on happiness until we return and find never ending happiness.
No one can harm the man who himself does no wrong.
