The desire to have my thoughts heard and looked at and tossed to the wind and thrown out into the universe has heightened in me recently...mostly because I can't find the answers within myself.
I have had an internal dialogue about innocence verses experience....here are some of the questions I am not finding concrete answers to, I'd love to hear any takes on the matter...
* Do we give up innocence for knowledge? Or have we now gotten so "advanced" and skilled at destroying innocence that we give it up for far less than knowledge?
*Why should innocence be protected?
*What is the difference between innocence and ignorance?
*Is there something in the Soft Eyes of Wonder verses the Hard Eyes of Seen-It-All?
8 comments:
Wow... "What is the difference between innocence and ignorance?"...
I'll ponder that for some time.
i have really been loving your blog posts. i must ponder and then post a coherent and intelligent response.
"what is the difference between innocence and ignorance?"
this is a deep thought, my belief is that innocence is defined as "pure" at the moment. i believe ive long lost my innocence and now have much ignorance. i do things that are wrong , and have lost my innocences at heart, and now use ingnorance as an excuse to hide it. hardy eyes, in my opinion, are people who have seen too much and have learned to ignore it or tune feelings out. i ponder this all the time, and wonder if im just being a fool when i think, thanks for the thought
That's been my whole idea Steph, can we choose innocence? Should we? Does it involve pretending not to know what is going on, or trying not to let it affect us. I don't know how not to be affected by the news, wars, politics, broken hearts, child abuse, drug abuse...exposure hardens you, doesn't it? But, when real family members and friends struggle with it, is it our nature to pawn it off on a higher power in stead of being in the grime of it because we want to remain "innocent" and untainted by the effects of these things. I guess I feel like I should be choosing innocence in my life, because of how I have been raised, but I don't know how to choose it without trading it for knowledge and experience I want to have...any more ideas...we need to get together and talk this Saturday!
I think that innocence is something that should be protected in children, but I think as adults we have to find a fine line between innocence and seeing too much. I don't think that everyone needs to see violence for example (the less the better), but it is important that we know it is out there, so that we can do something to stop it. But it is true, the more we deal in the details of the crap of the world, the more jaded we can become. I think it is extremely important to know reality-good and bad, and that things are not usually black or white, the way we think they are when we are kids, and I think that part of this does come with a loss of innocence or ignorance. I guess for me, ignorance may defined as when innocence has gone on a little too long. So there is a very difficult learning process here-learning about the world's good and bad pieces, and then focusing on the good in yourself and others.
your post reminded me of a verse in ecclesiastes: for in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. i guess the trouble is being sensitive enough to still feel grief about what's going on without being overcome by the grief. and it's a delicate balance between being too hardened by things that are going on or being too sensitive.
maybe?
Well, I suppose if we want to look at innocence in the face we should post Christ as the example. There we have innocence in the sense that you're talking about (i.e. the kind to be aspired to). So was He in anyway ignorant? Did he ignore others by retaining His innocence?
Did it in anyway hinder Him from making an impact on one or many?
Did He fail to live life to the fullest by being a "lamb"?
I had an "aha" a couple of years ago with my MIL (mother-in-law). I had kind of given her a label of "ignorance" of sorts because it seemed like everyone took advantage of her. She would just say yes every time and I hated it. I mean, couldn't she see the selfishness in the requests. . .? I was actually putting myself above her because "I would never allow myself to be used like that". Well, somehow after I guess about 6 years of thinking this I realized how ignorant I was actually being. Her innocence was maintained by her lack of judgment. I don't know of course and really it doesn't matter but for the sake of my argument, say that she never factored in their motive, only her own.
I wonder how many instances of innocence vs. ignorance we could just factor out the variable (i.e. the need to eat mud in order to see how it tastes) and then end up with both innocence in the Christian sense, and wisdom in the spiritual sense. I guess I kind of think there is a 6th sense gaining of "knowledge" for those who can let go of the "natural man’s need to gain experience by brute physic (sp? I mean fizzeek).
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