"Ignorance is a 'temporarily' bless"

I often hear that ignorance is a blessing, that to live in unawareness is to live freely. There is a certain allure in imagining a life untouched by fear or self-doubt, a life in which dreams flourish unchecked and the world seems open, kind, and full of possibility. As children, we believe we can change everything, not because we’ve analyzed systems or understood complexity, but because we have not yet been told we can’t. We don’t see ourselves as perfect, but neither do we yet perceive ourselves as flawed. We simply are. There is a kind of purity in that presence, in that unquestioned belonging to the world. And maybe that is what childhood gives us; not preparation for life, but life itself in its most immediate, undivided form.

Yet to reclaim that spirit as adults, I don’t believe ignorance is the answer. Innocence is not the absence of knowledge, it is the ability to carry knowledge without allowing it to make us bitter. To be aware of suffering, injustice, limitation, and still choose joy, still choose kindness, still choose hope, that is a far deeper form of innocence. That is wisdom. Awareness, if held gently, doesn’t destroy wonder. It refines it. It makes it real.

As children, we cried over the things we could not understand. An ice cream denied felt like a betrayal. No justification was sufficient. It was simply that someone more powerful had said no. As adults, we mourn things far more significant; lost love, stalled ambition, unreachable safety but the inner movement is not so different. We grieve because we feel we deserved something better. And often, we did. We deserve community, tenderness, autonomy, the dignity of being heard. But life does not always give us what we deserve, at least not on the timeline we demand. And yet, in time, these things can still find us. not perfectly, not predictably, but enough.

For women, especially, dreams can be caught in the long shadow of guilt and cultural expectation. We are taught to want, but not too much. To dream, but not too loudly. And often, we are told that certain dreams of power, of freedom, are not meant for us. I am not speaking here of the dream to dominate, to be endlessly rich, to be served and revered. That is not dreaming, but delusion. That is not hope, but hunger distorted by capitalism. A desire to rise above others rather than rise with them. When success becomes another form of conquest, when ambition is measured only by visibility and wealth, then we are no longer dreaming but consuming. And we, in turn, are being consumed.

Films like Parasite capture this tension with haunting clarity. In that story, hard work does not guarantee dignity. Intelligence does not secure safety. Those at the bottom do not fail because they lack effort, they are simply not invited to rise. Capitalism requires hierarchy. Someone must always be beneath. And in such a system, even the winners are not free. They are merely safer, for now.

As we grow older, we begin to see just how much of our inner life has been surrendered to a world that demands performance, productivity, and self-branding. We lose the luxury of stillness. We begin to fracture under the weight of constant expectation, what to be, how to look, what to achieve. Authenticity becomes slippery. We start to ask ourselves: is this me, or is this what the world has told me I should be? It’s a quiet kind of erosion, a wearing down of the soul. But within that erosion, I have found a certain form of resistance, in asking the questions anyway. In refusing to stop caring.

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. - Edward hopper.

Even when I look back and cringe at earlier versions of myself, I do so with love. I’ve learned to hold my past selves with a tenderness they were never offered in real time. I may no longer believe I can change the entire world, but I believe I can keep it from changing me in ways that betray who I am. That is a kind of strength. That is how I now understand spirituality: not as perfection, but as the quiet, relentless commitment to goodness even when it costs.

This belief was deepened when I read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a book written in the aftermath of horror, not to explain suffering but to insist that it need not destroy us. Frankl, writes that meaning is not found in pleasure or power, but in work, in love, and in the way we face suffering. Even in the camps, even in the most dehumanizing conditions, he witnessed acts of astonishing kindness, people who gave their last piece of bread, who held on to their dignity when everything around them was trying to strip it away. That is the true face of the human soul is not the denial of pain, but defiance within it.

This kind of strength is what I saw in Squid Game as well. The villain, a man consumed by power, insisted that his cruelty was a reflection of the world’s cruelty. But he was not just a victim of a broken system. He was also a man who chose not to resist it. His conscience haunted him not because he suffered, but because he stopped trying to be good. He surrendered his soul to survive, and in doing so, he lost himself entirely.

And so I return to Marx, In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” It is a sentence that has been invoked often, sometimes too casually. But its weight remains. Marx was not content with explanation. He believed that thinking should lead to action, that critique must serve creation. And yet, he also understood that not all change begins with revolution. He knew that rebellion without renewal can be destructive. The goal was never endless uprising, but transformation—a new world, not just a broken old one. The Arab Spring in 2011 reminds us that even righteous causes can lead to chaos when not accompanied by vision. Revolution must not be the destination. It is only a doorway. What lies beyond is up to us.

So no, I am not asking anyone to reject society entirely. Nor am I asking for blind conformity. I am simply asking this: be yourself, but be yourself kindly. Know that your freedom is real, but it is not solitary. Others, too, are trying to live their first life. They deserve your patience, just as you deserve theirs. As James Baldwin once wrote:
“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people... What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you.”

We are all capable of being the stranger, the oppressor, the savior, the failure. We are not separate from one another. And once we accept that, we begin to move differently in the world with more caution, more care, more understanding, more hope.

I have gained so much from this kind of acceptance. I see now that much of the pain I carried as a child came from other children who were hurting too, or adults who had never been taught how to love, or a culture that confused strength with silence. I see that the people who raised me had dreams once. They were not born to wound. They were shaped, like we all are, by forces they didn’t always understand. But now I have something many of them didn’t. I have awareness. And with that, a responsibility to do better.

Ignorance can feel like a blessing, but only for a while. It wraps you in stillness, but it cannot give you peace that lasts. Sooner or later, something breaks through. A question, a memory, a restless feeling that what you know isn’t enough. And in that moment, awareness begins. Not in comfort, but in truth. Even with awareness, guilt does not disappear. There are still days when it arrives uninvited, heavy and unclear. Guilt, too, is human. So is doubt, fear, confusion. These feelings are not flaws. They are signs that we are alive, that we care, that we are still trying to get it right. We live in a culture that often treats healing as a checklist as if we are puzzles to be solved, broken pieces to be labeled and filed. But healing does not always come from analysis. Sometimes it comes from allowing the feeling to exist without judgment. Your emotions are not malfunctions. They do not always need to be decoded. Sometimes, they just need to be felt.

No, I may not change the world alone. But I am at peace with that. Because I believe the world can still be changed; not through any one of us, but through all of us. I am no one without a community. That no longer frightens me. It comforts me. It reminds me that healing is not a solo project. It is a shared, continuous act of presence.

This is not an essay with conclusions. It is not a confession, either. It is a trace, a record of thoughts still forming, truths still tender. Meaning does not arrive fully shaped. It reveals itself in fragments: in childhood prayers, in awkward tears, in the quiet awe of reading the right book at the right moment. And if this reflection began with a girl full of dreams, it ends with her, too—the one who still wonders, the one who still searches, the one who writes not to be understood, but to remember that she exists with so many woman like her too.