The Other Way

Ignorance is not bliss.

A while back I wrote about the importance of letting go, or temporarily ignoring, issues that come up in a relationship, especially the not-so-important ones. I still believe in the necessity of not making a mountain out of every little detail.

The ignorance I’m talking about here is in a completely different context.

I’m referring to the world and community in a bigger scale. I’m talking about issues such as education, recycling, racism, preserving our forests, world peace and much more. Many of us operate within the thought patterns of “If it’s not affecting me directly, I don’t need to do anything about it.” We blissfully ignore problems that fall outside our own community, our daily lives.

If we don’t fall in the above category, we often fall in the other major one. There are many of us who acknowledge and understand the severity of some of the problems facing the world. Some of us even take the time to educate ourselves about them. Yet most of us do nothing about it. We use the excuse that the problems are too big for one person to resolve. We hide behind the historical evidence of people who’ve tried unsuccessfully.

It’s much easier to ignore than to have tried and failed.

But this is our world. These issues, however much you might feel don’t affect you today, might become crucial in your life tomorrow. You might not care about education in America until you have a child who ends up in the public school system. You might have never considered the difficulties faced by a handicapped person until, by some terrible misfortune, you or a loved one becomes handicapped.

And then there are those whose effects we might never see firsthand. You might never realize the full disastrous outcomes of deforestation or global warming since they might take years, decades, or sometimes centuries. Does that mean you shouldn’t do all you can to stop these from getting out of hand? Do you not care about the effects it might have on your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren?

It’s true that some of these issues might take centuries and hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of people to resolve. Some might never get resolved. Does that mean we shouldn’t even try? While we might not avert the potential disaster, we might be able to put it off for another hundred centuries, by which time science might allow for us to have the answers.

Or we might not. Maybe they will never get better. Maybe we’re doomed to have racism or mediocre education.

Or maybe we’re not.

We will never know till we try. Every movement starts with the first step. And you cannot take the first step if you’re ignoring the issues.

For me, it’s time to hit the books, the news, the essays. Anything to educate myself on the problems. Once I know the problems, I might be able to come up with answers.

For me, it’s time to stop looking the other way.

Previously? Know It All.