Does Paradise Exist?

I have been thinking about this for recently and I am not sure if paradise exists or not. You see all these commericals on TV that show you these great places where you can vacation or live. Places in the Carribean have white sand beaches and sparkling blue bodies of water showing a calm and peaceful way of life. But as the title of this blog post asks... Does paradise exist?

Sure you can say it does, but does it truly? I get that you don't have to vacation in places where it has white sand beaches and sparkling blue bodies of water. I guess the images that we in North America are bombarded with have in way become acustom to thinking that only these place are "paradise."

But the earliest "paradise" that most people know of is the Garden of Eden. There is one question that I have to pose is.... Do our modern paradises measure up to what the Garden of Eden was? Also, are we setting ourselves up for a disappointment by going off the images we see? There is more to "paradise" than just these images we see. Another place some Christians think that is "paradise" is heaven. But does heaven exist? That is another blog post for another time.

In the Eddie Money song "Two Tickets To Paradise" some of the lyrics say:

I've got two tickets to paradise
Won't you pack your bags, we'll leave tonight
I've got two tickets to paradise
I've got two tickets to paradise

Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it seems that Eddie Money wants to go to this place called "paradise" to escape the reality of where he currently is. If so, where is this "paradise?" Or maybe it could be more metephorical in the sense that he mentally wants to escape to "paradise." In either case he talks about this place called "paradise" and going there.

Again I ask, does "paradise" exist? Or perhaps "paradise" is what you make of where you are no matter the circumstances. Whatever it is, I don't know one way or another if "paradise" does exist.