Ignorance is Bliss

All my life I’ve been adamant that complete honesty is the best policy, no matter what. I would rather know the truth than live in some false sense of happiness. I don’t want the illusion of happiness – it isn’t real, and it is only a matter of time before that tumbles to the ground. Complete truth and honesty is what I require. Everyone deserves the truth and the ability to decide how they want to handle it. I hated people who felt like “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her”, and I couldn’t understand people who could lie to themselves or turn a blind eye to problems.

Well, a while ago I got my experience with that. It drove me nuts, because I knew what was happening, but I let it, anyway. It came from a place of fear and helplessness. I just didn’t care anymore. I gave up. “Life sucks and people suck, and I just don’t want to deal with the problems. I know they are there, but screw it. Can’t I be happy for five seconds?” Those thoughts drove my actions, but my heart screamed back in protest, so I had this inner conflict with myself that at times made me physically sick.

Instead of trying to process, deal with and accept imperfections, I was trying to completely block them out. I was doing exactly what I hated – building a false reality. But I couldn’t fool my heart. It knew better, and it wouldn’t let me be completely happy. Once I really came to terms with what I was doing, and gathered the strength to do the right thing, I finally put a stop to it. I had the tough conversations and made the tough choices that would allow me to lay everything on the table and process the truth, so that the pieces could fall where they would. I resolved all the issues that were tearing away at me.

In all honesty, the whole experience wasn’t that horrible. I learned a lot, and made some changes within myself. For me, at least, even just blocking out problems meant that deep down I had convinced myself it wasn’t something I needed to deal with right now. Somewhere deep down, I’d already analyzed the situation and had determined that it was acceptable for the time being. My gut was acting irrationally, but I trusted it. Since normally I am really strict and a perfectionist, I think this was a good experience for me to go through. It helped me loosen up a little. I gave myself a little dose of not creating a big fuss about every little thing. I still had my limits, and when they were reached, I still stood up for myself, expressed myself and did what I needed to do.

I think going through that will help me analyze my problems in the future. Maybe I’ll listen to that deep down voice, and though I will not block problems out, I’ll listen to it and decide to not get quite as worked up over some things.

What do you think? Would you rather live a lie but feel like everything is perfect, or would you rather know the ugly truth and deal with it?