Sarah Firth, Beautiful Companionship

Reality is tricky. Sometimes you can be so sure that you have a firm grasp on it but you truly are living behind the smoke screen of your own bias. The only thing that we have to keep us grounded to reality is our own experiences and the reflection of our selves that other people show us. If our ego gets in the way of our better judgment and experience, we only have our trusted friends to bring us back to our true form. Plato thinks of degrees of reality as a line. The least real is images, then bodies, and then concepts then true forms. If we only rely on our experience to guide us in life, experiences can only be created by objects, so we only rely on the physical images and the body of these things to guide us. Thus, according to Plato, we are relying in things that are less real. When we rely on the companionship of a true friend we are relying on the encounters we have had between our selves and another person. These encounters are more real because another person also has an ego and experiences thus they can relay concepts and reciprocate ideas. In this way it is easier to appreciate a companion in their true form which is the ultimate reality in Plato’s theory.