I’ve always thought of the uncomfortable as a place to grow. I’ve always been a big proponent of being somewhere you don’t belong. I think being in places we do not fit is where we learn adaptability, strength, power, unending lessons. There is power in that tremendously. Where does the line for chameleon lay though? How do we decide what is actually us while maintaining but also allowing ourselves to be in an open mind? The idea of not finding out what you are and who exactly, but when you challenge yourself and try to be uncomfortable is where it forages. I think it’s good to push yourself into things you don’t normally see yourself in, and yet there's a line where we ask ourselves how are we here? How did I end up here? I find myself turning twenty eight this year, and feel as though I’ve done too much living and perhaps I have landed in a spot like Alice in wonderland wondering where I even began. There is a thought that I fixate on essentially and retrospectively, how frequent you ask? well endlessly and it is the idea “ignorance is bliss”. I find it endearing every year I get older. These simple sayings hold more depth and understanding than I could even comprehend at 12 and to understand something at the surface is incomparable to seeing its multi-level analogies and pedagogy as I age. Ignorance is bliss sprays over and over with every rising scenario I seem to overthink or populate in my head. I find people in their everyday lives and I wonder if they are ignorant to the opportunities or social awareness of the fact of the size of this world. Has intelligence become the norm and everyone has believed to be so advanced and introspective that we are superior to creating a family and life and building a lineage? Is it so accepted that it’s “smart” to hold weight in responsibilities of marriage, family, work, etc. so our rash decisions do not destroy our life path? Are we too far obsessed with our path and our future to gather and research as much as we can to make better decisions with whom we trust and hope? One of my best friends, her mother, passed away during her time in college unexpectedly, brutally, and she had to be at college while it was happening until it got worse. She has recently told me how her dad and mother saved up so much to travel when they retire, to see the world together, and that they’ll never get to because she passed away. And this urgency to learn or gain a perspective in knowledge of these events and more so daily observations to make the best decisions we can? What is this for? And I believe sometimes that is the only answer to accepting more knowledge, or loss, or events and ideas that are adding less ignorance and more knowledge. I question my own grandmother often in this thought. She lives in her small home in an extremely small town, and for the last 5 years has been separated from her 2nd husband. The first one passed, and the second one cheated and she is the most angelic and humble of a person I think I’ve ever been around. I often find this not in naivety as some might say with ignorance as bliss, but there's a lack of knowledge about the world in her own perspective. She often says, I like the news on my tv and I like that I can turn it off. She reads endlessly. Day in and day out, experiencing a multitude of others lives instead of her own. She escapes this way, and through all this reading I find that’s why she is so intelligent than many of those around her. However, there is a divide in this, that she is content waking up everyday in her small home alone. Putting on her pot of coffee, and reading every single day all day. She gets out every now and then. Seeing the same ten people. She talks on the phone everyday with a few friends and family and is consistent in her communication, but other than that. She is happy. Many would question, is she? What kind of life is that? She wouldn’t show her granddaughter her being upset or disappointed in this life, and I can almost certainly without a doubt say she loves her life. How she treats others and carries herself, it's adamant she is blissfully content in her life and does not want more. To which I argue, growing up with limitations, how could you possibly not want more? But it is that and the exact opposite my brain endlessly catches myself hypocritically back and forth amongst examples. She has her books she can experience through others, and yet the desire to do these things for herself does not even gain momentum in her head, she’d laugh at the idea. Yet, myself growing up reading doing the same, I felt trapped and without power, where books gave me an escape. A place to run away in my head, until I could make my own decisions and grab ahold of my own life and live it how I wanted to. I often think of being 22 and heading to a third world country and how my brain realized how truly large this world is. How many people? How many lives. How many different ways to do this life essentially. How crazy there are so many similar ideas and patterns no matter the difference of any faucet and geographical location there is harmony in being human. How cliche and how beautiful my heart feels every time I get to recognize and align in it. I often find myself wanting to understand more, and see, and learn all the different ways and have found value in the idea of making myself uncomfortable. I have grown in this scenario, and I continually made an effort to do so after because I felt as though I learned. I fear through my years of travel, interests, history obsessions, people analyzing, and emotionally studying -I find myself stumped in the idea of - did I give myself ammo to never be blissful? Have we as a society done this to ourselves? I do not even find my own self extremely intelligent by any means, but I am curious. I do enjoy understanding. But did we sufficiently assume our prenotions in more, turns out to be more evil? Will I now air on the side of overthinking, analyzation, decision weighing, consistent prediction and anxiety to never truly pursue any path again because I will never be ignorant in my own confidence of experiences? I come back to Sylvia and her fig tree analogy. Are we destined to be stuck if we pursue information? If we pursue more knowledge? Blissfully ignorant a choice we can make to just pursue the simple matter? The right thing? Take a chance? And why do we have to weigh everything so considerably, read a situation or people so intently, make our lives so much more complicated with knowledge? I dive into the idea of the power of the internet and information so rapidly available. How are we doing? Will this be regulated by 2100? Will they say, “back then it was wild, the damages done to those having that much freedom to information nearly killed them” We see this in the french revolution, but we see its counter in the formation of the United States Government. I struggle to find the balance of what truly is the right way. Honestly, most days I wish I was ignorant. Unknowingly married in a small town in Missouri, with a husband I love, and kids to take care of, and life to pass so simply. Unknowing that the world could give me so much experience, knowledge, and a false sense of power; and I could be blissfully unaware in a life I now believe to be settling because I’ve tried to expand my life so big to become small. Is it so wrong that I have an addiction to feeling small? To seem invisible because being big has never felt right for myself? But to truly be able to take in the kind of life I want to live based on every ounce of information I believe to be important. Death, I am fascinated. What legacies do people leave behind, what values do they hold, where should I devote my being too, and how advanced are we that making these decisions I was never supposed to play God? In a lawless land, would you rather know and live in fear to protect, or be unaware and just do the best you could? Is ignorance bliss? Where does the consumption of ideas end? Until we are all, all-knowing?