Fourth Form of Madness

Perhaps one of my favourite parts of Plato’s work is his two world theory. Plato believed there was a world of “forms” and then there was this world we inhabit which only contains representations of the world of forms, a paler, lesser version. So for example, in this world there are many chairs, and you know when you are looking at a chair no matter what shape or size it comes in. But how are we able to distinguish them all as chairs when they are so different? Plato believed that this was because in the world of forms there was a pure concept of a chair that our souls were able to glimpse before our inception and that these pure concepts, remembered in our soul, were what enable us to identify lesser, paler, watered down versions of the same thing in this world.

The two world principle also applies for things like love, courage, truth, justice and so forth. Our souls have seen their pure form before our inception and long to be reunited with them, as these pure forms are heartbreaking beautiful and intoxicating, so much so that they spark a yearning deep within the soul. Whenever we come across something that reminds our soul of the pure form, whether it be beauty in this world, truth or justice, the yearning is kindled even more. However, Plato believed that this ability to recognise the true forms is hampered in this world as our senses give us a murky, muddy image and cloud our perception. Beauty is supposedly the easiest to identify, whenever we see something beautiful in this world, it agitates the soul and makes it yearn for the higher, pure form of beauty. It is this yearning, this passion, that inspires us to go forward in our search for truth, and the one that has always interested me the most, love.

Love has always intrigued me as I used to think of it is a very abstract concept. It has been so romanticised and glamorised that I am surprised that we can recognise it at all underneath all the hype and noise. How do you know what love is and that your concept of love is the same as the next person’s or indeed the person you are loving. Is it a selfless act of giving, caring, being? Perhaps love flows from the right thoughts translating into the right words and manifesting into the right actions. Aligning of all these parts of self so that they sing in harmony and resonate beauty.

Then recently I witnessed love, beauty, truth and courage all in one moment. My father recently passed away after a short battle with a very aggressive cancer. For the last four month of his life he was bedridden as the cancer had spread to his spine. My mother, brother and I took turns with sitting with him so that someone was with him every day and in the final days we all slept in his room on whatever patch of floor we could find so that we were there for him. On one of the nights, I was resting on the floor trying to get a few minutes sleep and I heard my father’s breathing change dramatically. I had promised him that I would be with him so I went to get up to be by his side. But then I saw my mother sitting beside my father, holding his hand and wetting his lips with a wet swab. I knew she had gotten no sleep for the last 2 days and i knew her heart was breaking over having to say goodbye to her best friend of 48 years. And I knew that only months earlier she doubted her ability to be so strong and courageous as this situation demanded. Yet there she was, a vision of pure beauty and love and grace, holding my father’s hand and whispering words of comfort and love to him. It was so heartbreaking beautiful that I respectfully lowered my eyes. That was love in action and it is quite impossible to misinterpret it.

For this reason I have come to believe perhaps love is an active thing that is defined best by actions rather than emotive words. It was never meant to be a stagnate concept for defining or lamenting but an active dynamic way of living. When love unfolds, when you get a glimpse of it, your soul does remember and starts to yearn for its purest form.