You don't know what you don't know... You know?
Isn't weird how you can walk through life with a certain understanding, thinking you've got it all figured out, then one piece of information comes out and changes everything.
Like, just recently, a client of mine told me she would not let her young daughter sing "Baa-Baa Black Sheep" because it is a slave song. As soon as she said it, it made complete sense. But it also felt kind of violating. You don't (I didn't) even give a second thought to the implications of it's lyrics, thinking it to be a simple nursery rhyme. But it's really quite a loaded little tune.
Just like "Ring Around the Rosey", which I learned a long time ago was about the Plague. The rosy rash a symptom of the disease, posies: a plant protecting again it. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down (and die). So messed up.
There are other things, not just nursery rhymes.
Like about Columbus and his "discovery". His controversial colonization of the "New World". Like Walt Disney being a Nazi. Like dairy having such a high pus content (ughh). Like imitation crab being made from beetles. Like sugar not being the cause of diabetes. Like artificial raspberry flavour coming from a Beaver's butt gland. Like no tiny fairy coming to buy your pulled teeth.
It's like finding the man behind the curtain. While just a minute ago you were shaking and quaking at the magnificence of the great and powerful wizard of Oz, and now you just feel ripped off.
You almost wish to maintain a willful ignorance of what's the real deal. They say it's bliss. That the truth hurts. And very often it does, it sucks.
It's like learning a magician's trick. It's disappointing, and you often wish you could go back to not knowing.
Willful ignorance, eh? Seems kind of opposite of what I'm aiming for. Which is, to just learn, and learn, and learn some more. I bet there will be some things I one day learn that will change the game for me. A lot of what I've learned already over the last few years has jaded me.
Choosing ignorance is sometimes the safest bet. Not being ignorant, but choosing it.
To quote the Beatles: Living is easy with eyes closed.
That's it for tonight.
AML
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