Illusion of the Mind // Braylan Stringfellow

In Paradise Lost, the lost Archangel made the statement “The mind is its own placed, and in itself / Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n” (Milton 16). This statement is too true. The human mind is absolutely amazing at what it can imagine. Individuals throughout history have been able to imagine amazing works of literature or plan impressive feats of architecture. However, the mind can be very manipulative. We have all heard the saying, “hindsight is 20/20,” which means you can see a situation in the past a lot clearer than in the present. This is were what the Archangel said comes into play. When I was in high school, I thought that the work that was assigned too much and that it was too hard to do. I used to think a four page research paper was nearly impossible back in 9th grade. Looking back, I can see that it really wasn’t as bad I a thought it was. My mind made it seem like high school was so hard, but now that we have papers way longer than four pages, I can see that it was all in my head. In the example of papers, high schools paper are more of a “heaven” compared to college papers.


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  1. Emmett BryantSeptember 6, 2021 at 7:55 PM

    Hey Braylan! That quote rings so true to me. Sometimes we like to compare one person's mental suffering to the suffering of another person and in the process minimize the first person's suffering. We forget to realize that when our mind is in a dark place, it "Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n." We all have those things that seem so real, and so troublesome to us, but we know that others around us wouldn't understand.

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