Philosophy Made Simple Book

This book sat on my shelf unread for some time, and I recently picked it up as part of an introspective journey that is part of making a life change at age 52. As I pack up/wrap up my life in a house that has been home for 26 years, years that seem to have passed very quickly, floating down a river of raising and maintaining a family, I find myself wondering if my perceptions of my life are really correct; was all as I perceived it to be? Was I so entrenched in the moment of the life, that I missed things? Where there parallel universes going on that had the same events but different realities? Was my reality the real reality that was happening?

The same sort of reflective introspection is at the heart of Philosophy Made Simple. The Allegory of the Cave, as applied to a single life raises all sort of questions about what happened over the last 30 - 40 years of a life. While you're busy living it, engaging with the shadows reflected on the wall of your "cave", what's really going on? Rudy's journey through Shiva's book as a means of making sense of his own life, is rife with metaphors. It also serves as a reminder that at its fundamental core, philosophy is about ordering and making sense of life and finding meaning. Ultimately, each finds one's own meaning and explanation. Why we are living our lives in our own universe, others are living parallel to us in theirs.