Is ignorance a bliss?

By Samiya Anwar

A millionaire or beggar, a kid or an adult everyone has same desire. What is it? All people crave for similar thing. What is that common in every person? Undoubtedly it is happiness. It is bliss, harmony or joy. We all want to be happy. Isn’t? Happiness is not something anyone else can give us... or take away from us. Happiness is what we make of our lives... or we long for it. Whatever our circumstances or state of affairs is we can create a blissful life... or dejected one. There are two options. Two choices in life and it are up to us.


Sometimes it is better to be naïve and have fewer details of few things. For instance today’s children, have so many sources of attaining information. It is not just in the library. The web provides bundle of information to everyone. A simple access to internet gives you the knowledge of every good and bad. Though knowledge is power, it is not so in the present day. Too much of knowledge can be evil and disastrous. Parents have insecurity issues with kids who are overwhelmed with too much of information holding in heads. Children are able to point out their parent’s mistake. Now a day’s children do not act or behave like children. It is disheartening because children know too much. When you are too aware of the flaws in life, living loses its idealistic thrill. Here knowledge is unpleasant.


The elders and oldies are happier to be in their ignorance. According to them ignorance is innocence. They are aware that world is globalizing and changing. But they keep telling the kids you’re too young to do this and that. However children don’t listen and have pain in the future. Like underage drinking, smoking, drugs, etc all the bad habits they develop imitating others. What you see is also knowledge. Sometimes it is good not to be informed of few things before age and time. Knowledge is not always prevailing it can be off-putting and scary.


Coping with different emotions is part of everyone's life, and we all feel happy and sad at different times at different stages. When I was a child I always wanted to grow looking after the joy of adulthood to others. I thought grown ups are happier and I wish to be one among them. I was hungry for maturity. But the situations I had were different than others. After attaining puberty I found childhood was better than these years. The start of adulthood had actually shut the door of innocence and a world full of pain and suffering was introduced to me. I was not ready to accept the real world. So I thought it is better to ignore some stuff of life. I felt happy that way. I found a kind of bliss in being ignorant

Once I heard that to acquire true happiness, we need to be open to new things, and not close our mind and clutch onto ignorance. But the poor and sloppy are happier than rich because they are not awaken to the true side of the world which is nothing but brutal. What we want is satisfaction from life. If it is achieved in being uneducated and uninformed it is subtle.

In the Tollywood movie Brindhawan Colony, the hero in the movie knows that the heroine is dead but he still comes to the same place after death and talk to her spirit. He continues to be in fancy of love. He is a willful ignorant. But he is happy this way. I think when our expectations of life don’t meet; we will hopefully get the same comforts of the person in fantasy-land. The same was shown in the form of love story in the movie

We all deserve a happy life. There is no wrong in finding the bliss being unaware of particular things in life. If you lie to others, you’re a liar. If lie yourself you’re still the same- a liar. It is something very tricky or calls it philosophical. The joy I feel in comforting myself is ignoring other people’s opinion and be my own. If it is a lie, Yes, I am a liar. What matters to me does not matter to the universe. If it is illusion, then yes I am illusionist. We are no one to bump into the lives of others who are happy. Is not I true? Do we need to drag ourselves back to reality of the real world, where in truth we may not be so happy?

In a short story “The doctor’s words” by R.K Narayan a doctor goes to treat an old friend who is bedridden and suffering ill. The conditional state of the friend is so bad that he can die any moment. Firstly doctor asks his friend to make his will ready. The wife of the friend threatens but the doctor consoles both that he will be fine by next morning and he wants his pal to be done with the important work. The doctor does every possible treatment and leaves the house telling him that he will see him other day. Doctor knows that he is lying and nothing can save his friend, it’s too late. He keeps the man and his wife in ignorance and also worried himself whole night. But when the doctor arrives in the morning, he is startled to see his friend sitting absolutely fine. God knows how the man under the mouth of dead is back or the doctors consoling words or the magic; the man is saved like a castle in the sky.

If ignorance protects us from pain then it is absolutely ok. When you are ignorant, you don't realize that there is wrong in the world. When you don’t want to compromise, you stay in your beliefs blindly. It is like staying in dark but still lightening your world with the invisible light of ignorance or pain. The brain doesn’t work when you lock the door by calling yourself ignorant.

Yet an ignorant person may invent a happier world to live in than that of the world they actually do live in. Ignorance is bliss indeed, after all anything for happiness. Hurray!