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I mentioned to a friend recently that I forget time and reality exist when I’m eyeballs-deep in a project. Not just hyperfocus – where you blink and the day is gone, you haven’t eaten, and your full coffee is cold – but something wider. I forget the day of the week, seasons lose meaning, and I struggle to focus on or prioritize or think about anything other than that project. This is why I don’t have much going on in the shop right now – I’ve been eyeballs deep in several major, longer term projects. Amusingly, at the same time, my best friend had a round of this while working on a major project of their own. When they finished the project, they joked that they had to remember how to exist outside the project again (which is a standard part of it) – I half-jokingly said that it made sense, they’d been in The Art Cave translating shadows for a while.
The cave and shadows is an old metaphor – Ancient Greece old. Wikipedia sums it up better than I can:
Imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from childhood, but not from birth. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not to look around at the cave, each other, or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets “of men and other living things”.
The people walk behind the wall so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see, but the objects they carry do (“just as puppet showmen have screens in front of them at which they work their puppets”). The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them; they are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the walls; the prisoners believe these sounds come from the shadows.
Socrates suggests that the shadows are reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
This metaphor is often trotted out to denigrate people perceived as ignorant – oh, haha, they think the shadows (their beliefs, their opinions, mainstream whatever, conspiracy, etc) is reality, haha, what fools! How ignorant, how poor their upbringing, how inadequate their education, how limited their intellect to not know better!
The next part is often forgotten (emphasis mine):
Socrates then supposes that the prisoners are released. A freed prisoner would look around and see the fire. The light would hurt his eyes and make it difficult for him to see the objects casting the shadows. If he were told that what he is seeing is real instead of the other version of reality he sees on the wall, he would not believe it. In his pain, Socrates continues, the freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to (that is, the shadows of the carried objects). The light “… would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.“
Socrates continues: “Suppose… that someone should drag him… by force, up the rough ascent, the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into the light of the sun.” The prisoner would be angry and in pain, and this would only worsen when the radiant light of the sun overwhelms his eyes and blinds him.
“Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can see only shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself. Only after he can look straight at the sun “is he able to reason about it” and what it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
If you were the prisoner, wouldn’t you rather someone show you light, the stars, the sun in a way that doesn’t hurt? What would change if we didn’t drag people out forcefully, insisting that pain was the only way to freedom? What if we could remember what it was like to be dragged away from our illusions forcefully, and decide that we do not want to perpetuate that kind of suffering? Yes, even in the face of them causing suffering with their beliefs .That is a choice we can make. We can turn away from the shadows on the cave wall that tell us that the only way to teach is through pain in equal measure. We can step back from an eye for an eye, from blinding people with the often overwhelming, terrifying light of new truths.
We can choose to translate the shadows first.
This is the heart of the work of an ally. You are uniquely suited as someone who stepped away from the cave wall, seeking truth, and not because you were dragged away by personal necessity – you chose to. Because of that, you remember how real the shadows felt, you remember the pain of seeing the light for the first time, and you can find a way to reach those still entranced by the shadows on the cave wall in a way better than the one you experienced.
You can choose to walk away from the paradigm – another cave with shadows on the wall – that says brute force, blunt harshness, overwhelming data, and yelling is the only way forward. You can be a buffer of compassion for both sides – shielding those who are choosing to stand in the light of their own truth, and those who find that light too painful to witness because they have only ever known the shadows those behind the wall wanted them to see.
You can translate shadows.
My best friend is both standing as light and ally, and I try to be both as well. It is a difficult position to be in right now – it is exhausting, it is terrifying, and many days it feels hopeless. Many of us find ourselves left so frustrated and burnt out that we feel like we have no other good option than dragging people out forcefully, and if they hurt on the way, so be it – may it be a taste of their own medicine. When you’re in pain – like when you’re focused on a project that’s consumed you – things outside of your immediate focus stop existing – that’s a different kind of shadow on the wall. To transcend human nature and find the courage, strength, wisdom, and hope to translate those shadows into art to help others find their way to the light is a mark of a great soul.
May we have the courage and wisdom to translate shadows with compassion – for others, and for ourselves.
A.Markov
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