Ignorance and Fantasy

Are beliefs not often the kids of ignorance and dream? Think about the celestial perspective of earth that young souls entertain at the peak of the innocence, when their youth has been surrounded with love and filled with happiness. Hear their bliss. Dreams enlarge within an vacuity of understanding like a laughing gas and also induce the blindest, the purest joy.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say, as it frees us the emotional restraints connected with knowledge (which reflects the limits of truth and hence the impossibility of our fantasies). It is the best playground where the mind can build castles in the air, create a wonderland, and dwell delightedly in this realm of reverie. It paves the way for the reign of mistake, as it leaves us to believe anything we like. Everything that’s desirable is realizable, if not real, until we find proof to the contrary. Santa Claus finally expires of our previous age once we are no longer so young, so green, so we are easily duped with a tall story.

In fact, yet wise we might be, we are still in danger. We indulge in dreams about the world below, which is never completely known, or the past, which is unknowable. We are always tempted to think that our health, our relationships, our career, or some other portion of our own daily life, will be fantastic, or that our death won’t be a conclusion, but a passing from here to some paradisal hereafter. This temptation is famous for most when they find that a charismatic fortuneteller or spiritual leader who professes this notion, which stays jarring nonetheless. Our believing is then caused by ignorance and fantasy, plus religion.

A good illustration of self-deceit that concerns young idealists and betrays their warm-blooded aspiration for perfect love is the illusive passion they often encounter toward attractive members of the opposite sex whom they little know. By perfect love I mean an entire and durable harmony at every level physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual between two fans. It involves friendship into a high level, as the words girlfriend and boyfriend indicate. Once it includes pride, it modulates and transfigures it.

Pop tunes are typical vehicles for this ideal, which destroys many young spirits. I’m thinking of young men particularly, who are usually quick to fantasize about fairly young women and fall madly in love together, or instead with a fantastical picture of them. This quickness is typical of the ardent and imprudent youth. It needs nothing more than a few smiles and nods, a few gracious words of arrangement, to create these young men imagine they have found a soul mate, as they pour out their internal self their awareness of what is good, true, right, or sacred. A few auspicious signs and, voilthey take the fairly young women for dream women and so are besotted together! A few misleading signals, in reality. Every charm adopts a cause for alert.

If, in the battle for success and pleasure, society really is still a treatment for individual constraints (an imperfect cure to make sure, together with side effects), it’s likewise a tablet hard to swallow. Civility is a sleek sugar coat that eases the swallowing. Give thanks for those who phrase their discontentment with delicacy and mix it with a compliment and an encouragement. No nagging, no gagging. Sometimes civility excludes honesty and amounts into well-meaning or self-serving hypocrisy. It turns into servility by means of a mix of aggression and kindness, or through pure selfishness. One way or another, a few folks are duped, retained in the dark, however they should live wisely, in the light of understanding. They are denied fact: the chance to conceive of the true situation and achieve their true intent.

Young men, one of the fantasizers I called earlier, are often lured with the social graces of young ladies. The inadequate fish take the hook and finally discover they have made a error, like others in precisely exactly the exact same boat. The dream women were regular maidens or vixens who behaved and spoke favorably sweet, and later proved lovable in a limited way or demonstrated their sour temper.

A long intimacy is a good test of a couple’s true character. It consistently strips relationships of this silky look they occasionally have originally, when seduction overrides every other consideration. This look is superficial and deceptive just like the outer layers of the onion. Once it’s removed, after a succession of modifications that indicated a slow return to naturalness, conflicts arise. The fact is uncovered; tears are shed.

Many young fantasizers part in their fans now. They embark on another relationship until the following disillusion, the next dissolution, then embark on another connection, and so forth. They do exactly the same in other regions of life, starting this or that with high expectations and stopping upon the first difficulties, time and again. They settle for less than perfection; they ever build anything to talk of.

Some of those fantasizers stop this nonsense after a number of disappointments and eventually change into brave realists. Their bravery distinguishes them in other disenchanted spirits who give up hope to give in to laziness with a transparent conscience. All these defeatists confuse their attitude with realism and endure nullity or mediocrity instead of fight for excellence, which is possible, unlike devotion. In their opinion, individuals are in their element just when fantasizing, like fish after swimming. In actuality, humans who are adaptable are nearer to amphibians than to fish. They could return to earth without dying of frustration, and better still, with a chance to live happily, as a result of a mix of battle and resignation that affords joy and serenity.

Brave realists know and accept the requirements and constraints of joy. They think it even more precious as it has a high cost and is certain to be missing sooner or later. They also know that although one can indulge in a fickle existence for some time, one has to finally commit and apply oneself to a particular connection, study, or profession, regardless of imperfections and problems, if one wants to accomplish something worthy of course. Nothing good could come out of a search for greater that always leaves something for another.