# Our Quest
- URL: https://www.petrikajander.com/our-quest/
- Author: Petri Kajander
- Date: 2004-10-07
- Language: en
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuLaT4259E4

Plato's ideal world consists of perfect items. Those items are not present in our visible world, still we can get a feeling of these perfect items by the world around us. We are living around those items—only the proportion of the perfectness varies. We recognize these forms, and we desire for more.We would like them to stay with us, forever. Our endless quest is to reach for these ideal items and surround ourselves by them. Our life is a quest for ideal forms that cannot stay in a material format but can reflect parts of life's perfect existence, for example, a quest for the Holy Grail, which is not a material kind of quest. Therefore, the material sought is eternal—ideas can only be found in their original form.

Some people remind us about humbleness, beauty, passion, sympathy, love, intelligence, humor, selflessness, and so on. These ideas are reflected in the person. We feel that these items are something noble and very familiar to us. We are naturally attracted to and moved by these ideas. Similarly, we can find the same forms and ideas in the world around us. The nature is always beautiful, and our humanmade art captures the essence of many timeless shapes of ideas. Still, like Plato said, we cannot capture the formless into a physical shape entirely. Only parts of it can be present, at best.

Next time you meet a person or see an object that captures some fraction of the ideal form, ask yourself this question: Are you attracted to the person/object or to the form it represents? This is something worth considering for a while. If it is really the person or item, then it should not matter if it is changing over time—maybe reflecting less or decaying the ideal form that caught your attention in the first place. Our disappointments in life reflect the fact that we fall in love with the idea and not the object it represents. When the object itself changes we are taken by surprise and long for the idea it used to resonate.

Ideas and forms are eternal. They are always present but they cannot be captured in time and space. They can be experienced only as they come and when they come—in that very moment—the rest is pure illusion and shadows.