One of the wonders of human experience is that it could all be an elaborate illusion. We know that people walk out of a room more slowly after hearing words referring to old age than they do after words around youth. School people in logic and science and the only true meaning that follows comes from rational explanation and objective analysis. We are both locked in the the mould our learning has created for us and unaware of our given shape. Many are happily ignorant of how they have been cast and live the reality they are in as if it is the only one that exists. Is this ignorance a blessing or a curse?
A friend referred to the comforts of materialism and consumerism masking the existential anxiety we are all experiencing. Striving for more, a bigger house/car/boat/church...,and living with plenty in some way overcoming the questions of who we are and why we are here. Her phrasing gets you thinking and sends you deeper and deeper in to enquiry about the hard work and stress of the world today. One possibility is that sufficient food to keep you alive today and no attachment to thoughts of greed and desire is all you need for a perfect life. This is currently rejected in favour of working harder and harder to amass more for the self in the expectation that one day we can have enough. Then we will be able to relax, enjoy our life and reap the benefits of all that hard work.
Ignorance is bliss has perhaps never had such twisted meaning. I am like many and worked hard to gather comforts and material possessions around me. I am now learning from special friends that there might be simpler truths for contentment and finding the enquiry in to them rewarding.
Share a comment with what this evokes for you.
It's such a pleasure to read this, Len... I think of the extraordinary joy I increasingly get from tending my vegetable garden. I have been growing seedlings in recent weeks and am currently planting them out - finding it hard to go to bed without bidding them good night.
ReplyDeleteLast weekend as I gardened I was accompanied by an injured fox and soon realised she needed help and called the RSPCA. The experience of sharing my gardening with her whilst waiting for the man from the RSPCA - witnessing her distress and also her beauty even in the presence of death - is one I found deeply moving.