By Jibran Anand
No matter how great the truth is or how good reality can be, the true ecstasy of life resides in illusions. Existent in all shapes and forms, illusions represent a paradox and present perhaps the greatest contrast known to mankind.
They represent every positive thing in life, peace and calm, hopes and dreams. For a split second, they allow the person experiencing them to reach the penultimate state of their life, which is quite simply, what each individual aspires for. It gives the person a place of solace, a niche of their own where nobody can entreat or invade; it is the epitome of privacy. Perhaps some would argue that living in a world of illusions could blur the line between reality and imagination. That some get so engrossed in their illusions that they lose track of what really matters, life, love, friendship and so on.
However, I strongly disagree. Yes perhaps extensive illusions could lead to this, and often people waste their lives chasing futile things which are the products of their imaginations or rather illusions. However, despite all of this, illusions present a world where right and wrong are distinct, where cancer has a cure and finally where Liverpool has a trophy. They offer everything that our ordinary lives do not, they represent the hunger and the desire of the human race to reach immortality, they offer total control and yet absolutely no control.
Illusions give an opportunity for people to not only get lost in their imaginations and their dreams but also in themselves. They allow the person experiencing them to reach a state beyond the ordinary human capacity, where everything becomes possible, where the control and the power lies in our hands. And yet, despite all of this, they also represent total chaos. They portray a world where nothing is under the individual’s control. Where at the flick of a wrist, the illusion might change into something deeper and darker or might even extinguish itself.
People say that our world is full of paradoxes and without contrasts in our lives, there would be absolutely no conflict or interest. They say that if our world was filled with answers instead of questions, we would be robots. If everything was so simple, we wouldn’t be so complex, so loveable and yet so detestable. We wouldn’t be such fascinating yet completely distasteful creatures!
