Be Ignorant Not

Something always goes around you every single moment. There is not a second that goes by without something happening around you. Even when you are asleep, you might be in the confines of your sweet rejuvenating slumber but not the fine little things that are around you. The hands of the clock on the small table by your bed still moves in the clockwise direction. The next door neighbour’s cat will still creep under the gates to the streets and hunt for mouse in the dead of the night. The millions of microscopic organisms and cells still carry out their biological process in your body.

The world is in constant spin 24/7. Day will turn to night and night will turn to day. Flowers will bloom and flowers will wilt. Oxygen will be released and oxygen will be breathed. Peace will come and peace will go. Lives will be lived and lives will be lost. Friends will turn to lovers and lovers will turn to friends. Bonds will form and bonds will break. Happiness will turn to grieve and grieve will turn to happiness. These are all the things that go on without fail every single day. These are all the physical and spiritual anatomies of life. These are the things that give birth to inspiration and inspirations that give birth to philosophy. These are all the things that made up life and you should not miss out on all these things.

Now, whoever who told you that it is best to be in blissful ignorance is a complete idiot. As a Science stream student, I have learned that ignorance is not bliss in the field of Science. In fact, ignorance could prove to be fatal. For example, when you don’t use the correct method to handle the very reactive alkali metals, an accident could very well happen in the Chemistry lab. In the context of "accident", I mean waking up in a white antiseptic-smelling bed after you accidentally blew up the lab to bits and pieces. Well, of course I mean this in a fictional kind of way. No school board in the right mind would provide restless teenaged students with rubidium.

In the Science vocabulary, ignorance is synonym with the word stupid. This is because when you are ignorant of the chemical properties of metals or the physical characteristics of a reptile, you are throwing yourself directly into the abyss of doom, literally. Not a single moment must pass without you not knowing and not a single trail of formula must slipped when you are living in the complex world of Science. You must be in the constant ‘Know’ all the time. Open up your eyes wide and pay full attention to your surrounding. This is the most important thing that you must learn once you’re a Science student. It is always about the survival of the fittest and to survive in a Science world, the motto that you must implant into your head is: Be Ignorant Not!

I am not implying that we are all robots once you are a Science student. But then again, who wants to be ignorant, right? Who, honestly wants to feel left out on a certain issue that is going on around us? Who wouldn’t want to know the answers to all the questions that there is in the world? Wouldn’t it be a dark sinking feeling if you don’t know something? To feel that you are under this big shed that seems to block out the sun and preventing you from seeing the light, isn’t that an almost sinister feeling that churns in your stomach and leave an empty space there? Doesn’t ignorance bring about the feeling of being left out?

Not all the time I guess. The world is a painful ordeal that we have to face each and every day as long as we still live and breathe, I am aware of that fact and I am not going to deny it. The fairytales that we believed in only lasts towards the end of our adolescence. We started seeing the brutal part of life once we shed our innocence. The truth hurts. Everybody knows that. Not a single scientific process goes without a slight defect in it and not a single truth is told without the sharp edge of hurt behind it. The world that we live in today is not a beautiful one. The 8pm evening news could very well be my witness. Just tune in to the evening news today and you would know what I mean.

As a Science student, it is important to be in the ‘Know’ 24/7. You must not ever fall into the dark valley of ignorance. But as a normal human being with the tendency to get hurt every now and then, it is sometimes good to be in the dark. Life will still go on without us knowing too much things that bring about despair. Now, whoever who told you that it is best to be in blissful ignorance, doesn’t turn out to be a complete idiot after all. But let me add a word to his remark- It is best to be in blissful ignorance sometimes.