Blog Entry 6: The Allegory of the Cave essay

In the allegory of the cave written by Plato, Socrates aware us to find the enlighten true of our life by learning in the process. This dialogue shows us how a prisoner of a cave found freedom to a world he never knew exists out of the cave and his reactions to the new discover. If I compare this dialogue to the process I had to live to grow up from childhood to the adulthood, I could find myself still in the cave, but about to be released out of it due to the hard times that made me grew up.

When I was a child I grew up with many family’s issues, those issues are still attached to my thoughts, and the memories I had from my past are not quite delightful. My parents were separated when I was just 5 years old; they always kept the reasons of the broke up as a secret to me. I could not understand why my father lived in another country. After I found out that he had another woman, the worst of my father being away from me was that; my classmates went to the family meetings with  both parents, but in my case, it was just me and my mother. My mother knew that I loved my father, and to protect me of any disillusion, she hid the truth, instead she made me believe that my father worked in another country. After a couple of years later, I knew the real truth of his abandon and when I realized that my mother lied to me to protect me of being damaged by my father’s behavior, I felt all the love  that I have for her and I could not blame her for anything.

In some way, growing up means to change our life and thoughts to entry in a new world,  we all have to face the new reality of our lives at some point, we cease believe that were point them from our parents and relatives. We start taking life in a more thoughtful manner and seriously worries are taken in consideration. Think about getting a job when you have never worked before, some people react to this new task with fears, some others can reflect an excited behavior and many reactions are not simple understood. Compare it to the Allegory of the Cave; we have one reaction from a prisoner that was thrown out his world to an unknown world. One possible reaction cannot describe the reactions of the other prisoners, but many of the prisoners will not change their world for a new existence unless they are obligated to do so. Some people choose never to grow up, especially if they have all the privileges in their childhood but at the end, they are forced to change and stand in their own feet.

 

We all familiar with everyday challenges that make us change from one point of view to the other, revealing a new true every step of this journey called, “life”. I have been exposed to this processed. As an example, I considered all the ESL students to be in a new reality, as a new comer, you are forced to integrate to a new society which can be quite different from your own society. We need to adjust many aspects of our regular life, such as; our habits, what we wear, and even our pronunciation. In addition to all these changes, we must learn a new language, which is not easy at all. If we want to be part of that reality, we would have to obligate ourselves to become part of the American system, and that is a new reality all people from any part of the world have to face.

  Overall, The Allegory of the Cave is a meaningful dialogue that awake us of the reality around us, when I compare it to my own life, I found myself in a constant development of my true, since I consider that in everyday life, we are in the process of learning new realities from people or situations that were never shown to us.