We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
— Plato
Plato isn't simply praising courage or condemning cowardice—he's identifying the peculiar tragedy of *chosen* ignorance. A child's fear of darkness is innocent, even necessary for survival; but an adult who shrinks from truth, from scrutiny, from what his actions reveal about him, has surrendered something essential to being human. We see this everywhere: the executive who refuses to read the audit reports, the parent who never looks at their child's report card, the friend who changes the subject rather than hear honest feedback. The light exposes not just danger, but ourselves.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca