The Real World

Related to my most recent post but on a much more serious note, I have noticed that when people talk about living in the real world, or bringing somebody back to earth, or anything like that, they mean seeing the painful, hard aspects of life. And those are important parts of life in this real world. "I'm sure no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and sorrow," as Anne Shirley says in Anne of the Island.

But the real world also involves joy and beauty. Note that Anne did not say that life can't be properly developed without much trial and sorrow - she said some. And she also said that no life can be rounded out without it. The rounding out of a life implies that there is variety - not all joy; not all pain. Lehi speaks more authoritatively on the subject in 2 Nephi 1, where he says, "And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery." So in order to really experience the hard things that make up real life, we have to experience the good times, too. Otherwise we wouldn't realize things were so hard. This sort of idea is also expressed in the same chapter of Anne of the Island that I quoted earlier, saying "[Gilbert] could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are also those which suffer most sharply."

And from my own life experience, the greatest happiness and the greatest hurt I have ever experienced came pretty near to each other in time. This was not coincidence.

Anyway, I can understand saying that somebody who does not see and acknowledge real trials and suffering isn't living in the real world. But only if we can also say the same about somebody who does not find the joy. And if you look for it, you can find something good just about anywhere.