in true blogger form: ignorance is bliss
I used to lie awake at night, crying, while asking myself all those intimidatingly large questions: how big is the universe? is there something beyond it? what will happen when I die? will I be ready for it?
I finally settled myself by proclaiming that the universe is a marble, and beyond is another world. I figured I couldn't be expected to know more than that, as I cannot look into their sky for evidence or inspiration.
Now here's the catch... I have since lived through a good few years of education and experience. I can now reference stats about the most horrific and realistic prospects, such as the atrocities in Burma, Chinese human rights issues, controversy over the independence of certain nations, a continued justifiable distrust in the Canadian government, terrorism, international organized drug syndicates...
Point is, things are pretty shitty, and I am becoming progressively more aware of this. I am still ignorant as sin, but learning, painstakingly, thee horrors of living.
And yet, I am more satisfied than ever before. I have no good reason to be; really. I mean, I have many things that make me happy, but nothing (beyond family) to offer any sense of long-term contentment or accomplishment, my entire life revolves around potential and prospective. It is, to say the least, a gamble of epic proportions.
And so we come to the justifications of the privileged. Why don't I sacrifice my meager earnings to charity? Because their happiness does not impact me the way mine does. Why don't I cry myself to sleep every night thinking of the starving kids from the commercials? Because they are beyond my usual perceptions, and their suffering is beyond my comprehension. Truly, I could (and should) do more, but there seems to be a certain need for a degree of conscious ignorance. In the introduction to my copy of Anne Frank's Diary, there is a quote along the lines of "It is impossible for anyone to feel the pain of all the Holocaust's victims. But anyone can feel for this one girl." It's stuck with me through the years as a very good point: the various human organs that are related to feeling - brain, heart, skin - can only feel so much.
So it's not really that a papercut or heartbreak compares to living in constant fear of massacre, but neither can such trifles of human existence be ignored. Even those who have endured such horrors can black them out, or be in a state of shock, because they can't process their experience. As so often before, I feel as though I am merely regurgitating that which Cptn. Picard has said: our weakness as a species is also our strength; we need be fragile to be anything at all.
Because life is in the little things, it seems. Maybe this is how a person can love their abusive partner simply because they always bring home lilies. Or why a peaceful protest seems to have more weight than a violent one. Or why I can enjoy my coffee while reading about almost apocalyptic predictions over gas prices rising and the consequences thereof.
In short, it seems living in a marble is a sort of sanity.
~RA~