My father used to tell me that I was a happy baby. He used to describe to me how I would smile and sometimes laugh for no reason, and that he believed it was the gods or angels playing with me. My mother used to tell me that I was an easy baby. I drank all my milk and fell asleep. No fuss, no tantrums.
On hindsight, I think I was a happy baby because I was completely ignorant of how dark, vicious and cruel the world can really be. I was not yet cursed with knowledge or experience of any kind. I wish it would remain like that forever. But alas! We must all grow up, gain experience, gain knowledge, and with that, comes the unfortunate realization that the world is really an ugly place full of hatred, greed, jealousy, pain and everything else rotten and diseased.
I love William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. The underlying rationale for those poems is, as I understand it, that only when one has suffered, will one know true happiness. For happiness in a vacuum, ignorant bliss, is not true bliss, or is only limited bliss because how will you know true happiness without first experiencing pain?
I can relate to that. However, I'd rather be ignorantly happy than knowingly happy. If I was ignorant, it may be the case that I wouldn't even know sadness exists. Which is fine with me. Because in my life, once the door to sadness was opened, it just came flooding in, taking root in my heart, and started growing and growing over the years, a branch here, a twig there, a leaf yonder, steadily growing, until all I can feel now is sadness. I forgot what it was like to be happy.
I forgot how I used to be when I was a happy baby, smiling and laughing for no reason, as if the angels or the gods were playing with me.
On hindsight, I think I was a happy baby because I was completely ignorant of how dark, vicious and cruel the world can really be. I was not yet cursed with knowledge or experience of any kind. I wish it would remain like that forever. But alas! We must all grow up, gain experience, gain knowledge, and with that, comes the unfortunate realization that the world is really an ugly place full of hatred, greed, jealousy, pain and everything else rotten and diseased.
I love William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. The underlying rationale for those poems is, as I understand it, that only when one has suffered, will one know true happiness. For happiness in a vacuum, ignorant bliss, is not true bliss, or is only limited bliss because how will you know true happiness without first experiencing pain?
I can relate to that. However, I'd rather be ignorantly happy than knowingly happy. If I was ignorant, it may be the case that I wouldn't even know sadness exists. Which is fine with me. Because in my life, once the door to sadness was opened, it just came flooding in, taking root in my heart, and started growing and growing over the years, a branch here, a twig there, a leaf yonder, steadily growing, until all I can feel now is sadness. I forgot what it was like to be happy.
I forgot how I used to be when I was a happy baby, smiling and laughing for no reason, as if the angels or the gods were playing with me.
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