“Ignorance is bliss.”
I hear someone say it and I knew where they were coming from. You see some things developing and you know if a certain someone knew about it there would be a lot of grief. It’s best if the person doesn’t know, so nothing is mentioned and ignorance is bliss.
Similarly, when you are not aware of something because someone has not brought it to your attention, there’s a sense in which your state of mind is a lot better not knowing. For as soon as you are made aware it brings a great deal of hassle, even in knowing, you’re aware that you can be made complicit to something or you’ll be expected to carry something that you didn’t ask to carry. It would have been better if you didn’t know for there ignorance is bliss.
It is also that thinking, however, that has left people carrying on blissfully unaware that their actions are not making matters worse not better. It’s that sort of thinking that has seen people find out too late just how destructive their habits have been over the course of days, weeks, months and years. When they realise what they’ve done and what it’s caused the look of guilt, shame and pain can be truly tragic. If only they had known earlier. If only they had been informed. If only someone had brought some light on the matter.
It’s quite something when the realisation hits. When the light switches on and you see just how much you were stumbling around in the darkness and how that stumbling and bumbling affected you worse than you believed. Yet at least the light is on. At least you can see clearly. At least you can make decisions based on having all the necessary information in front of you.
For some when the light has switched on and their actions are revealed it brings shame and disgrace. Which is why they prefer to stay in the dark. For others in the light of that shame and disgrace they would prefer to receive something to help them out and make something better of life in the light rather than staying in the dark.
I am grateful for those painful episodes in my life when the light shined in some of my darkness. I’m grateful that I could not hide any longer. I might not have been as grateful at the time. I might have preferred to shrink into a corner and wish the earth would swallow me up. I could have sought to justify my actions and make a ham-fisted to return to my previous state of ignorance. Thankfully there was too much at stake for that to be a viable of responding to the light brought on the matter.
In the light of the situation it was not just a matter of seeing the mess and ruin, it was also seeing that there was a better way on offer. A better way that called me to choose to live in the light rather than return to the darkness.
Every now and then the light shines in the darkness and allows me to appreciate why it’s so important to live in the light. Likewise I realise that by being who I’m called to be that in itself can help to bring light on the situation for others, to allow them to see things that they may not have considered previously and choose to leave the land of ignorance to live in the better plains of wisdom.
It’s my ongoing hope to persist in living in the light and see the light shine for others to recognise that ignorance is not bliss.
(Photo by Ian van Torm on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 