Plato's cave

In Plato's cave, prisoners are chained in a cave facing a wall, unable to turn their heads. Imagine, walking down a long dark cave that is turned into prison. And imagine at the end of it, you come across a wall in front of which on a stone bench sit people chained to each other and chained to the bench and they sit there living their lives day after day not being able to recognise that they are prisoners. Behind them burns a fire and puppeteers hold the puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners look at the shadows, observe their movements, believing that what they see is real. That is the only reality that exists for them - they believe in it full-heartedly.

And after you have imagined all of this ask yourself: How much time in our lives we spend really feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting - really living, and how much do we spend observing the movements of the shadows on the wall in front of us? How many hours of the day we spend passively chained to the chairs of our choosing and how many we spend running in the woods?