"Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood,
for the correct path had been lost."
"Some time in the middle of our lives, we all, each one of us, journey to face a hell of our own."
--Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Dante, an Italian Poet, wrote the Divine Comedies in his exile. In poverty and distress, he wrote to keep himself alive. As a man, he wrote what he felt and what he felt was hell.
Inferno was the first to be written. Beatirice, his lost love sends Virgil to guide him through hell for in hell, he will see what had become of sinners and through writting, he could warn mankind.
If we read these two lines of Dante, we find him not just imagining his hell as everybody concludes. Dante lived in his hell and as he observes, so does everybody. Midway through the journey of OUR life. He means everybody goes through a phase of feeling lost. The dark wood is the mind. We are lost in it. The second book, Purgatorio is the middle place, Limbo, as you would call it. Only in Paradiso is Dante's pilgrim saved. It is when we face our hell that we pass the journey and into the next stage, the middle stage. The passing stage is heaven, our heaven.
We each have this pilgrim Dante in us. Life is a journey, that's a given. There are ups and downs and this is what Dante shows us. We, a pilgrim in our own world, journey the ups and downs of life. Only justice and love can save us and only Justice and love will prevail.
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