Tag: Little Moments

Ignorance is bliss when you are a child and the world is still your ice cream sundae. Ignorance is bliss when you are told that your crush does not feel the same way about you. Ignorance is bliss when you discover that your best friend has stabbed you in the back. Ignorance is bliss when your significant other has found someone to replace you. Most importantly, though, ignorance is bliss for those who want to be shielded. But, to be shielded is to be weak. You cannot live, learn, grow, and build up a thick layer of skin if you are constantly trying to look the other way because you might be upset about what you find if you were to stop and take a good long look at what was actually going on around you. The truth might hurt but so do lies and so does playing dumb.

To have knowledge is to be hurt, but to have knowledge is also to have the means to protect yourself in the future. Knowledge is power, ignorance is a vulnerability, and humans are vulnerable enough as it is. Stand up and accept the knowledge. It may not always be pretty, but we aren’t pretty people and we don’t live in a pretty world. Sometimes we get sad, other times we are depressed, but there are even greater moments of genuine happiness and gratitude. You need to remember those moments. You need to focus on what makes you happy. What brings a smile to your face? What makes you forget your sorrows, even just for a moment? Those are the things you need to focus on. Don’t desire to be ignorant, desire to be happy. True happiness is better than ignorance.

It was quiet enough to be mistaken for silence when I walked from one store to the next in the strip mall that night. I could catch a glimpse of my breath every now and then against the dark sky before it disappeared again. There were people who moved across the parking lot and silhouettes that moved in store windows, but I barely noticed them. They were strangers and strangers are easily lost in the crowd.

But him…he was missing. It couldn’t be completely silent without him there. Sure, it was quiet, but it was not silence. With silence comes peace and there was no peace without his company.  It was merely a quiet moment with a phone that wouldn’t chime and voices I couldn’t distinguish on a night that was as cold as it was lonely. It was quiet, but it wasn’t silent and I really could have used some silence right then.

The other day I was at a department store and I witnessed a mother trying to reason with her young daughter over something they would probably end up disputing in many different forms for the rest of their lives. The girl had a pile of nice clothes that she had picked up, two of them being dresses that the mother didn’t think she would have a chance to wear anywhere before outgrowing them. By the time next year’s dance rolled around, she’d be too tall. Willing to compromise, the mother said the girl could buy one with her allowance. With a smile and a snatch, the girl chose the dressier of the two choices because it was “prettier.” Her mother told her that it’d be more likely that she would have something to wear the other one too and it was slightly bigger so it would fit her for longer, but that didn’t matter to the little girl. She had made her choice, choosing the pretty and the impractical. Whether or not it would fit her next year, keep forever, or outgrow by next week didn’t matter. What mattered was the present, the now, and right now wanted pretty. It didn’t want logical and big picture planning; it wanted instant gratification –that buzz that comes with getting what makes you happy, no matter the cost, even if that happiness can’t last forever. Maybe that’s the trick to life –finding those little moments of happiness that will fit for now, whether it is a man, a job, a friend, a hobby, or even just a dress.