Ignorance is Bliss

Oh, how I long for the 'good ole days' when I was too young to care about the world around me, the corrupt politics that run our country or the woes of everyday life. Remember those days when nothing mattered but who you would play with at recess or how you scored on a spelling test? When summer days were spent exploring and subsequent nights playing soccer with your peers? And what about the games of tag and hide-and-seek and the endless bike-rides through town....

Those were the days, weren't they?

Oftentimes I wish I could return to that blissful state of pure, innocent ignorance.

Life was so much easier. Perhaps it felt rough at the time---passing that social studies test would require significant effort, or doing 20 situps in P.E. might strain some under-used muscles---but the older I get the more I wish I could just....ignore everything around me.

And some people certainly can. There are those who couldn't care less about who is voted in as President or who represents them at a local level. They don't care about retirement funds, bank accounts or financing a new home. They couldn't locate Iraq on a map if paid to do so, and really don't care that we are engaged in a worthless, tiresome war. They live in their own little dream state, ignorant of everything around them.

But are they so wrong?

I despise watching the news or reading the paper. Rare is the day that anything positive makes its way into our media archives. Riddled with death, destruction, corruption, murder, abductions and political fights...news stations and newspapers are essentially the annals of doom.

And perhaps it is the conspiracy-theorist inside me, but I have to question whether our votes really count, City Hall actually can be fought and whether doctors are actually out to kill us rather than heal us.

All the questions, the cares, the worries, the fights and the voting. Do they really matter in the end?

Perhaps returning to that ignorant state, careless and carefree, would do us all some good once in a while. In the deep confines of the Alaskan arctic, where news of any sort comes late--if at all--I found myself feeling my absolute best. If I wanted to seek out the latest buzz I could certainly head to an online news source. But it took effort on my part; it wasn't constantly all around me. Was it the overall ignorance of the world's happenings that contributed to my feelings of absolute health?

Likely.

Ignorance can certainly render bliss...and 'blissful' is an adjective that I feel we all need to embrace more often.