Ignorance Is Bliss

Random Unrelated Image: Vintage Condom Wrappers

Ignorance is bliss. You don’t know what is going on where, you have no reason to panic. You don’t know there’s some random threat from an unnamed terrorist so you don’t go out and spend fifty dollars on duct tape and water. Nothing happens, you’re safe in your living room, ignorant. You see leaves bustling in the breeze across your well-trimmed lawn, you don’t know that this is only a high concentration of air (oxygen, nitrogen, and other trace gases) moving to a low concentration while the leaf’s chlorophyll is slowly dying, being cut off from it’s main source of life, the tree. You don’t know these things and you’re happy just watching the leaf blow by innocently. You don’t know how fire works, how the wax below it doesn’t actually burn, it turns to a gas from the heat kept steady on the wick, and that’s what really burns. You’re happy watching the candle burn, the fire dance, the shadows flicker. The simplicity astonishes you and you don’t even know it. There is beauty there, in that simple view, in that ignorant glance. A leaf stumbling around in the wind, a candle flame dancing.