QUESTION:

If ignorance is bliss, where's all the bliss?

Call me anything but don't ever call me stupid. I will out-talk you till you get the message: "Stupid, I aint."

The opposite of bliss is misery. So I guess I'm miserable. All the accumulated ignorance-busting stuff in my head is making me miserable.

But if I'm miserable - with this and that and everything doing the samba in my head incessantly - why aren't the ones without this mental writhing blissful?

I thought for a time, they were: "Who gives a fuck bout tha rest of tha world long as I have me cans of Bourbon an me ciggies, ey mate?"

Yeah! I wanna say that!

I won't lie, there have been times I've tried. I've hung out with mates who don't give a fuck. They wouldn't know 'Paradise Lost' from "Hey Elise, is Paradise same as Heaven?" Their world is their immediate environment and the goings-on within it. Conversation topics are limited and simple. Mostly it's just air exhaled as words, and most of those, expletives.

There's been no evidence of bliss. There have been just as many arguments and petty grievances and well... just as much of everything crappy in my world- only... distributed differently in theirs.

They know nothing. Not geography, not history, not literature or arts; they know nothing of almost everything we consider to be knowledge. And even when they are introduced to a concept by me- say that... "Sugary drinks are bad for you." Their minds hear me but there is nothing they can do with that information. They cannot process it; they lack the capacity to think critically- therefore it gets shoved to the side as irrelevant... and their children have Coke for breakfast along with Fruit Loops straight from the packet the next morning, and they chug on the first 'bourbon and coke' of the day for their brekkie. (True story.)

This is not being judgemental on my part. The opposite in fact. There are some moments when I seek that bliss- of not caring. Times when I wish a simpler mind, one discharged from the duty of having to know everything possible every bloody day. And then to process it. And then to question everything I already know about it based on the new stuff learned.

Miserable exists- else why would I be seeking relief from it? What I don't understand is- given that there has to be an opposite according to some physics law... where's the bloody bliss? Who is hiding it? Is there some splintered-off place where people park themselves and live out their blissful lives? What would you call that place- between absolute ignorance and a busting-at-the-seams brain?

"Middle ground?" That place where you're neither here nor there, neither on this side or that, neither for or against... is that bliss? Is bliss neutrality? Considering the perils of knowing and the perils of not knowing and choosing... the apathy of NO choice? Is bliss not ignorance but deliberate apathy? (What a leap, right?)

Okay. I give up. I sound just as insane as every other time. Credit for consistency only.

Help me out here. Where's all the bliss hiding huh?