Forever Ignorant, Until We’re Not.

Perhaps the very point of Life is to learn how to better understand and live according to The Golden Rule.

Perhaps it’s the nature of this life to make mistakes and then make reparations of them, all towards the higher learning and understanding of ourselves. And then using this understanding of ourselves towards the understanding and respecting of ALL Life as we ourselves wish to be treated. Maybe that’s the point. It’s that we don’t always know how to apply The Golden Rule at first, but that we learn of it, through our experiences, through our successes, and through our failures. Maybe it’s even most through our failures. Maybe it’s through our; dreaded to share, socially shamed to avoid at all costs, personal fear of admitting to, even unto our very selves, our individual, oft occurring, happens to each and every one of us – maybe it’s through our very own Mistakes. Maybe it’s through the learning from them that this is the entire point of everything.

With this in mind, perhaps we’re all destined to be perpetual children in some regards. And it’s only through the making of our own mistakes, through our own observation of our own cause and effect, that we have the opportunity to mature. Perhaps this is the very point of Life as we know it. So in other words, we’re forever destined to be ignorant as children, or innocent as children, until we know better. Another way to say it, is that until we’ve experienced something, we are children with respect to it. We are ignorant towards it. We are innocent of it.

With this model, we’re forever ignorant, until we’re not. In this respect the phrase, “ignorance is bliss” to me takes on a whole new meaning. Because it’s once we’re no longer ignorant of the pain and suffering that we’re capable of inflicting upon others, that we become aware of our own, hopefully self imposed, limitations to the freedoms we had just prior believed ourselves to have. So if you’re ignorant of the suffering you’re capable of causing to others, then you have no need of burdening your consciousness with any of the other’s perceived suffering. So when you’re ignorant, or when you’re innocent, I believe you have more self-perceived freedom to be, just as you please to be. To be just as you will. So in your ignorance you certainly have found your bliss.

Is this the lesson then that I should learn from this? That I should strive for innocence? That I should strive for ignorance? That by holding onto these things, by striving to be these things, that this is a surefire way for one to achieve true and everlasting bliss? I surely hope not. Intentional ignorance seems to me to be a way of intentionally avoiding responsibility for my own cause and effect upon this world.

Thinking on these things, I know from my own experiences, that if I feel like I’ve been hurt by others, even if it was in innocence, even if it was in ignorance, I still feel as if I were hurt. Their innocence nor their ignorance lessens the pain that I endured at the time it was inflicted. It only relieves the “memory” of that pain. The memory of the pain that I felt that I had endured. That to me, I know that I had endured.

So then for me, the answer to the question, “Should one strive for innocence, or strive for ignorance?”, is obviously and resoundingly NO. I feel like I should neither strive towards innocence nor ignorance with respect to my future actions. To me, the opposite rings most true: that I should instead strive towards knowledge, towards wisdom, and towards the understanding of others. That even though I believe I lose some of my own personal freedoms while pursuing these things, that I would rather myself live in a world with other individuals who feel and treat each other, including myself, the same way. This seems to me to be the only foreseeable and realistic way towards all of us treating each other to the very best of our own ability as I myself would wish to be treated.

So, to summarize my understanding, or my current perspective as to perhaps the point of this Life, it’s that we all begin innocent and unfettered, but that as we learn more and experience more, especially as we make mistakes, if we’re listening to ourselves when we make these mistakes, that along with making them we learn more boundaries, more restrictions, and more limits to our own individual freedoms. But it’s along with the learning of these boundaries, restrictions, and limits that I believe we have the opportunity to learn something else. We have the opportunity to learn something which I feel is much greater than our own unrestricted individual freedoms. We have the opportunity to learn compassion for others. Which I believe is also one of the most important ways that we each individually have access to in order to learn compassion for our very selves.

It’s through all of this learning that I believe we gain the knowledge and the understanding required in order to truly live by The Golden Rule. And it’s through living by The Golden Rule that I believe we learn how to grant each and every one of us as much individual freedom as possible, all without having each of our own individual freedoms constantly infringing or constraining upon all of everyone else’s in turn. It’s how we treat each other with the freedom and respect that I believe we each deserve to be treated with.

So, what is it then that I feel like I have learned from all of this?

Well, I feel that I myself, and everyone else included, should all continue to frolic about as the perpetual children that I like to believe we all are. I feel like we should simply continue to enjoy our lives with all of the freedoms, and with all of the bliss that we believe ourselves to have. However… along with this, I believe that we should practice all of our child-like frolicking with the understanding that once we make a mistake, which we assuredly will, once we recognize that our actions are indeed inflicting pain and suffering upon others, pain and suffering that we know that we ourselves would not prefer to endure, once we understand that we are responsible for the consequences of our own actions, it’s then that I believe we owe it to ourselves, and to those whom we had hopefully – mistakenly, innocently, and ignorantly harmed, to grow out of our innocence, to grow out of our ignorance, and to take the steps required to mature. Further, if you believe it’s necessary, once we have come to understand things like these about our own actions, I believe we owe it to those whom our actions affected, and perhaps even more importantly, we owe it to ourselves, to make reparations towards our own mistakes to the very best of our own ability.

I believe we owe it to each of ourselves to willfully sacrifice some of our own individually cherished freedoms in order to treat each other as we ourselves wish to be treated. And further, I believe that these sacrificed freedoms were never actually true freedoms to begin with. Rather, in my opinion, they’re the freedoms of the innocent, the freedoms of the ignorant, and the freedoms of the blissfully naive.

I personally choose to believe in the opportunity for the individual growth of each and every one of us, both uniquely and independently. And I hope that by choosing to believe this, that I’m correct in my hope of a belief that we’re all willing to learn to treat our mistakes as opportunities stumbled upon in order to grow from. Opportunities to sacrifice our freedoms of innocence for. Opportunities to sacrifice our freedoms of ignorance towards. Opportunities to sacrifice our blissful naivety of. Opportunities to sacrifice in favor of self maturation.

I choose to believe this with the hopes that we will all take our own responsibility for our own actions in our own individual lives. I choose to believe this with the hopes that we will all take our own accountability for our own individual mistakes. I choose to believe this with the hopes that we each use our own mistakes as individual and personal opportunities to learn from, opportunities to grow from, and opportunities to mature from. I choose to believe this with the hopes that we will all choose to lose our own ignorance in the favor of the knowledge, the understanding, and the compassion that I believe is required in order to truly live by The Golden Rule.

I choose to believe all of these things because after all of my experiences here, to the very best of my current understanding, this is how I believe I myself should live. And I hope others live by similar tenets. I truly hope each and every one of us have our own individual aspirations to live to the very best of our own capacity by that age old wisdom – The Golden Rule. Because as it seems to me, and as I know that it has seemed to so very many people before, it’s the best and simplest way for so many of us to get along with minimal pain and suffering while providing maximum individual freedom for all.

So finally, as I stated in the beginning, I would like to say one last time, that I firmly believe;

“We’re all forever ignorant, until we’re not.”

-jamesdainger