The shadows of realityWe are like the characters in Plato's “Allegory of the Cave”. The people chained to the cave were forced to watch the projections and shadows cast on the wall. Because the shadows were the only thing they saw, they perceived them to be "truth." Today, our “shadows” have become the media, death, and pain that influence what we believe to be “truth.” Media, death and pain are quite common in today's world and we encounter them quite often. Very few have reached the true “reality” governed by thought and reason. Life is a struggle in which achieving enlightenment and seeing “reality” is the goal. We have a skewed view of life because we are imperfect. Our notion of reality is distorted by the veil of ignorance that surrounds us. Most of our information about current events comes from the media. Newspapers, television news and radio stations publish their own vision of events to the general public. Their ideas are mainly formulated for the benefit of their sponsors and large corporations. The general public, in turn, forms its own ideas based on the corrupt ideas of the media. Either we understand what they publish as the truth, which is the most likely case, or we don't believe it at all. For example, an Associated Press article states that "2012, the year the cosmic clock finally hits zero days." Because of this statement and many others like it, the “Curious?” Ask an Astronomer” receives emails from fourth graders saying they are “too young to die.” Meanwhile, the Mayans near the Yucatan Peninsula think the idea of ​​the end of the world is ridiculous and have more "real problems like rain to worry about." Television news is another example of propaganda. We... middle of paper... we have a “utopia”. The shadows that everyone must struggle to free themselves from are projected by the media and its sponsors, death, pain and, ultimately, fear. Each individual is a pioneer who must have the initiative and the courage to turn towards the entrance of the cave and look for the light there. We are ultimately turned away from the light because it is the easier option. The state of denial that almost everyone goes through is only the first test we undergo in the process of seeing the light and coming out of the cave. We are imprisoned by our own beliefs, no matter if those beliefs are that all men are bad apples, that my beloved son is not dead, he just disappeared, or that my husband is not murdered because that he couldn't hurt a fly. Our society today is suffocated by shadows and our job is to shed light in an attempt to disperse these shadows...