Knowledgeably Ignorant
The day has barely begun and my soul longs for the quiet peacefulness of not knowing. Ignorance is bliss says the poem from 1742 “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” by Thomas Gray.
“Ignorance is bliss, `tis folly to be wise.”
Knowing is knowledge and knowledge can be a tool in an artisan’s hand. Are we not, either the skilled professional or the apprentice learning from the generation before?
Many including myself, once thought that one must have a degree, at least a two-year degree to claim to be wise and successful. That the documentation of higher knowledge (education) meant that you had excelled beyond the ordinary. Maybe once true but did not Abraham Lincoln self-teach? Was he not and still to this day considered a man who thought deeply with each decision made? Has not higher education now become the norm?
As I have aged, nearing my sixth decade of life, I have learned that knowledge comes with experiences. We can read and be taught but those lessons are never fully vetted until they are experienced. We can sympathize, feeling sorrow for someone`s situation. We can acknowledge their pain. Yet to emphasize with someone`s situation is to share in the very experience of emotion. To walk in another`s shoes.
I`ve always looked at myself as an empathetic person. I become highly attuned to the energy and emotions from those in close proximity of me. This at times has cost me my own emotional well-being. It has felt almost as if I loaded a backpack of all their (along with my own) pain/fear/anger and began to weigh myself down with that I not the ability to change. Was this unintentional knowledge learned from experience?
My mother suffered/endured an illness never diagnosed of bipolarism. As a child I became attuned to her moods, the shift in personality the subtle change in her facial expressions. I learned to “think ahead” of what her reaction might be to a word or a phrase that struck her offensively. I had the knowledge of those experiences to see and think outside the norm for outcomes or possible solutions. I became adaptive to situational changes and learned to forge ahead.
I learned as a child that better results came when I continued to spread love and acceptance. When I began to sympathize in her hidden pain of misunderstanding and unresolved trauma, I learned to except that my own feelings mattered enough to heal and not be passed to my own children. Those experiences showed me what not to do with my own children. I taught my children the knowledge of emotion that often times is hidden within an action. I wanted my girls to have a sense of self. Did I always get it right? No, but I would let them express the emotions I learned to suppress. It is in those moments I allowed myself to feel value and purpose to pass on wisdom from experience.
Can we as a species show compassion and forgiveness to those who have walked the darkness but see the light and afraid the light no longer excepts them? Do we not reaffirm the darkness when we reject the transformation of another`s heart, blinding our own spirit in self-righteousness? Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom comes when we apply good judgement, insight and experience to our decision making.
Cruelty masked in knowledge lacking wisdom is deadly and we see that playout throughout history. The scholar toward the uneducated or the minimally educated. The engineer toward the everyday worker. The skilled toward the unskilled. I can attest that many whom I have encountered, proclaiming to be more intellectual than myself missed out, in my view on common sense and often times decency toward us lesser valued in society. As if we were born to be nothing more than subservient and grateful for our existence.
I have felt slighted and unworthy to share in ideas and creativity because I didn`t fit into a group’s perception of knowledge or value worthy of an opinion. I either lacked the education, financial means or class acceptance to flaunt my right to exist and contribute within someone else’s eyes. Even here on this platform and within group comments. Unknown, unpopular and overlooked is an emotion I am navigating and have experienced since beginning of my adult life at fifteen. (I left home and housed/fed and clothed myself since 15) So, I forge ahead adapting but without losing my self-respect for what I bring to the table of creation. I do this while maintaining respect to those who have worked and educated themselves who have higher/lower financial means and who also share their life`s wisdom. They are my emotions based on my past experiences and I no right to assume another seeks to devalue me. And when/if a scenario becomes evident by another`s actions, I check my emotional baggage and move past and beyond the slight I perceive. That is my learned intellectual wisdom of what knowledge is.
How many great pieces of art, literature and science achievements have been made by those who were considered lesser than? How many who were thought to be of minimal intelligence have added great love and understanding to our everyday to know that they achieved what they were told would be impossible? Especially those reared in the wisdom of empathy and unconditional love.
And sadly, how many of those raised in anger/hate and/or desperation fed morally deprived meals of bigoty, misogyny and otherism impact our world with negative effects and consequences? We don`t have to look any farther than the presidency to see the impact of such knowledge lacking in wisdom.
Today I am impacted by a statement written beautifully by Beckett Johnson.
“Maybe it`s the weight of existence”
That one-line permeated my very heart and soul this morning. The “weight of existence”. Profound in its meaning and in my interpretation of the value it has brought to my day.
I am thankful to those who share their wisdom and pass along knowledge and insightful heartwarming stories, poems, pictures and creativeness. Also, to those who are informed and schooled who bring us science, medicine and the news to benefit all of society.
For me it has been in forgiving that I learned to see my own faults. In kindness that I learned love and the fullness giving to another brings into my life. I hope that I have inspired and uplifted somebody with my words as much as other`s have done with me.
✨Be the Light 💖 - I am but One Soul`s Journey