Blog 1: The Cave and I

Ignorance is not bliss. Therefore, living in a cave being completely oblivious from the truth doesn’t scream happiness to me. Knowledge is power. Knowing the truth is eye-opening. In Plato’s text, the prisoner who goes leaves the cave and goes into the light suffers from sharp pains. The truth hurts. When people’s outlook on the world is shattered, it is upsetting. No one wants to be told that all they’ve ever known was a lie.

Supposedly, being ignorant from the truth makes one feel safe and comfortable. To me, it’s never good to feel comfortable. How can you develop and grow as a human being if you’re comfortable with what you already know. Why not become more knowledgeable? It blows my mind when people say they’d rather not know something. It might hurt their feelings, but that’s how you become stronger as a person. I rather be heartbroken by the truth than be happy because of a lie.

For example, there are many tv shows, movies and books that have spouses cheating on each other with someone else. The cheater (let’s just say it’s a man) says has business to handle but actually goes out and does his dirty work. When he comes home back to his wife, he acts normal as if nothing has happened. The wife doesn’t suspect a thing because her husband is acting normal. Little does she know, he’s out with a bunch of women every weekend. The man is trying to save her heartache by keeping this information away from her. But is this really the right thing to do? I wouldn’t say so. If their love was really strong, he’d tell her the truth and possibly work things out. At first, the wife would be in denial because of how normal he would act when he would get home, but eventually, she would put two and two together and have the courage to act on it. No woman would say to her husband, “I wish you hadn’t told me. Now our marriage is going to fall apart.” I don’t know anyone who would say such a thing. They would want to know so that they could make the decision to stay and work it out or get a divorce. See, not knowing her husband was cheating is comfortable for the wife, but it isn’t the right way to live.

The truth can leave a huge impact on one’s life. Your whole outlook on life suddenly becomes extremely different. Change can absolutely be a great thing. In my past, there had been this one person who I was very close with and we told each other everything. She was basically an older sister to me. We were put into a certain predicament that I won’t go into detail with and in the blink of an eye, everything became different. She wasn’t the person who I thought she was. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since. Now she’s just a person I used to know; I don’t know her anymore. It took a long time for me to accept the fact that everything had changed so quickly. Letting go of someone who put a burden on my back was actually upsetting but I was relieved at the same time. I believe that when the truth changes everything, it is positive, even if the situation happened in a negative way. I even got “embrace change” tattooed on my arm. The truth will set you free. This sounds so cliché, but I definitely believe it.