Ignorance is bliss because it will keep you out of trouble, out of sight. Bliss is not joy. It is not laughter. Bliss is not untouched by worry or care. It is quieter. It is a dimly lit room where all sharp edges are softened because they are invisible. Bliss anesthetizes.
To know is to shatter innocence. To know is to rend the world. To ask is to choose one side, one stance, one obligation.
To ignore is to float. Cruising along, feeling light and free, with zero baggage. You will never find yourself on either side of any battle. You can stroll, ignorantly unruffled by so much as a single leaf or prick, undefiled by a single thorn.
There is a comfort in not asking. Questions can agitate the sediment of the mind. They can bring to life what would prefer to remain hidden: doubt, pain, and ethical discomfort. Ignorance can render the waters tranquil. Not clear but calm.
But is ignorant bliss anything beyond borrowed certainty? Is it not based on some level of detachment?
Distance, in fact, is one way to express it. Distance from reality, distance from repercussions. The ignorant, in other words, aren’t cruel; they’re distant.
They’re wrapped in a sort of soft, fuzzy cocoon, shielded by their own limited awareness. What they fail to see cannot accuse them, what they fail to understand cannot indict them.
Awareness is a burden. One can never go back to a convenient solution after one realizes the fault lines of a smile, or the cost factor included with a convenient solution, or the quiet violence in every system.
The enlightened are never comfortable. Not because their situation is unbearable, but because they are always aware.
Ignorance allows one to sleep through the wail of sirens. Comfort detached from its surroundings, rewards that ask no questions and are therefore shallow by nature.
Bliss crumbles the moment the world intervenes. Ignorance cannot justify itself; it merely prolongs the moment of reckoning.
Still, there is something seductive about it. There is something about the mind that seeks simplicity. That seeks fewer layers. That seeks an un-demanding world. One that does not continually ask to be interpreted. There are many benefits of ignorance: it frees one of contemplation, emotion, expansion, and weight.
But depth has a weight of its own. Those who pursue understanding trade ease for meaning. They give up the softness of ignorance, but they gain depth. Their lives carry weight. But they carry resonance as well.
Perchance ignorance is bliss because it expects nothing from us. Knowledge is heavy because it expects everything from us. To see is to accept pain as the price of truth. To accept pain is to understand it cannot be refunded.
Bliss is transitory. Awareness endures through everything.