Black and White

Agent Smith: Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered? Where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire Crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect worlds, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their realities through misery and suffering…

These are Agent Smith's words to Morpheus in the movie The Matrix. I don't like agent Smith any more than any of you do, but these words somehow attracted my attention. It's frightening how true they are. Misery seems to be a part of Human's nature.

Let's go back to the time of Adams and Eve. They were in heaven. They were living in a perfect world, but why would Adam make that legendary mistake and descend to earth? Why would he choose the misery of living on earth instead of paradise? He was lucky God forgave him, but then again maybe sin and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin. Maybe he had every intention of sending Adam to earth, the house of misery and struggling as Imam Ali beautifully describes it.

Would any of us accept to live in a perfect world? It seems amusing at first, but imagine no problem to solve, no one to help, no sadness, no tears…it's unbearable. We need misery to survive. When you're completely satisfied, you're dead, and that's the magnificence of black because without it, white would be just another color.