you know what the worst part about being cynical is? (and no, it's not the irony of that sentence.) it's the tainting of good memories.
sure, it's all well and good to be jaded by life to the point where skepticism is a part of your daily routine. this is particularly poignant when the single greatest asset of your professional career is a persistent and enduring need to question every single detail presented before you with a fine tooth comb.
what really bites however, is when you are cynical to the point where even when considering past instances when you were happy -- times when things might have (surprisingly) gone your way, or better than you were expecting -- you begin to question whether you were actually happy after all, or just deluding yourself.
now i realize that sounds terribly depressing, and more often than not, i won't argue that such a state of mind generally does not make an individual the smashingly popular life of most parties.
but, i digress. my actual point is that in lieu of these thoughts, and in discussing happiness, i often consider the concept of joy -- and i wonder if it even really exists. there have been moments in the past where i considered myself the fortunate owner of a "joyful" state of mind.
i may not have been emotionally happy, but there may have been some sort of general state of peace about things, whether it be a mixture of contentment and fortunate timing, or pure and simple indifference.
at the same time however, i so often find myself wondering what the reason was for this seemingly abstract concept that was supposed to exist outside my emotional sense of awareness.
was it real? because at the time it felt real, but in retrospect is seems...well, suspect.
if "ignorance is bliss" is an accepted axiom, then doesn't it only make sense that bliss is ignorance? and if i can equate bliss to joy, i guess the question more simply is:
does joy even exist?
4 comments:
hmm, I think of joy as being a momentary peak of happiness/excitement...happiness as being a sense of satisfaction/fulfillment that you are actively aware of...and contentment as being an underlying sense of the above happiness that you are not always aware of, but only once in a while during quiet moments. that is, the good kind of contentment and not the kind where you are just indifferent.
i think the kind of bliss that comes with being ignorant isn't real because it can't make you happy unless you are a fool, which the majority of ppl aren
t, or are fooled... which is just bad.
yea, a moment of joy makes sense to me. the more nebulous idea of joy -- the one not associated with emotion, but rather a self-fulfilling source of joyfulness -- is what tickles my curiosity.
in religion, it's kind of an essential thing. but much like religion itself, one often has a hard time reconciling it with reality.
I think lots of people are blissfully ignorant all the time. For example the happiness and satisfaction you feel when you buy that pair of shoes you always wanted or better yet if you got them for free. In that moment of happiness you forget that there are wars, people sufferning/dying, that the poor kid in the sweatshop that made your shoes just lost their younger sister cuz she was traded away as a child sex slave.
See ignorance is bliss. if you think about it hundreds of people around the world pay for our moments of joy, for our brief moments of happiness i'm sure hundreds of people have suffered or been affected in all aspects leading up to that one moment. How many people's lives do you think were made worse so yours could be made better? Depressing but true. I'll be the first to admit i choose to ignore things like that so i can be blissfully ignorant.
nobody answered my question, hahaha
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