(This painting is called: Behind the eyelids)
Close your eyes.
Now open them. What did you see?
(I realise that this is a strange request since usually when we close our eyes we regard that as not 'seeing'.)
I have found that if I have been in bright sunshine and then close my eyes,
whitish blobs float around on top of different and interchanging coloured backgrounds.
In the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" written by John Lennon, John penned these words: 'living is easy with eyes closed'. For me, that line is one of John's most profound and insightful lines of lyrics, but what does it mean?
Some suggest that it could mean living a life of denial; as in not seeing what one doesn't want to see, or some say its living a life of unawareness; according to Buddhist philosophy 'ignorance is bliss.'
The trouble with seeing things; traumatic things, scary things, difficult things, etc.. is that it can be very hard to "un-see" those things.
Some things we see that are troubling to us, can be very hard to forget even if we try very hard. According to Laurence Patihis: "The way memory works for arousing stimuli, such as disturbing footage of a police shooting or of a war scene, is that the emotional arousal primes the memory for strong consolidation, and then the epinephrine and other excitatory neurotransmitters strengthen the consolidation over a period of minutes, hours, and days. All of this is out of our conscious control."
Time helps a memory to fade, but the nature of seeing disturbing things is that those images although pushed deep into our subconscious, often has a tendency to "pop" up unexpectedly. A smell, a sound, anything connected even so slightly with that disturbing visual can become a trigger and before we know it, the visual we are trying so hard to forget is right before us. (Whether we have our eyes open or not, we "see" it.)
Besides seeing with our eyes (eyesight), we also use the word "see" to mean something totally different as in understanding something: "I see what you mean...see it from my point of view....you're not getting what I see....that's not how I see it..." and so on.
Was John Lennon right? Are many of us living with our "eyes" closed?
Is ignorance bliss?
As far as I can ascertain, that very much depends on the individual.
After reading "Flowers for Algernon", a book by Daniel Keyes, it seemed to me that he was suggesting that sometimes ignorance can be bliss. (For info on the synopsis, Google it perhaps?)
Just like it is hard to un-see what we have seen, I believe it is also hard to un-know what we know.
A dark spot on the skin may send some of us quick smart to the doctor whereas some of us may push it aside with a "it's probably nothing". I think perhaps John Lennon was right; it is probably easier to live with eyes closed, as in filtering out undesirable information, but this may only work if the information can be kept at bay. Once that dark spot changes, grows or starts to itch, ignoring or not seeing it, may become difficult.
On the other hand; ignorance may be bliss when it comes to knowing some things.
Personally, I prefer not to know all the things that can go wrong with an airplane when I am about to embark on a 24 hour flight overseas, I also prefer not to know about all the things that can go wrong with a car, the toaster, the TV, the computer, the phone, etc....well, you get what I mean. Too much information and knowledge can be quite a burden for some of us, but exactly what constitutes "too much" seems to me to be a very individual matter.
One may be uninterested in politics, but when political decisions are made that directly affects one's life, it is harder to stay ignorant. One may be uninterested in religion, but when acts by religious people directly affects one's life, it is harder to stay ignorant. One may be uninterested in climate change, but when one's home is swept away in a flood, tsunami or tornado unexpectedly, it is harder to stay ignorant. One may be uninterested in "psycho-babble", but if a loved one suddenly developed mental health issues, it would probably be harder to stay ignorant.
(Ignorance=uninformed, lacking knowledge)
When you eat a sausage (if you eat them), do you really want to know what's in it?
If someone you have been very close to suddenly seems to avoid contact, would you not want to know why?
When you drive your car, do you really want to know how a combustion engine works or do you just want it to take you from A to B?
If your partner comes home from work/study/etc. every night in a bad mood, would you not want to know why?
It occurs to me that with seeing and knowing, often comes a sense of responsibility of some kind: "Knowing xxx...should I not be taking some form of action, say something, or get involved in some way?" Not seeing and or knowing relieves us from that...and I wonder if perhaps this may be what John Lennon was referring to when he wrote: "living is easy with eyes closed".
On the other hand, being "blind" has its drawbacks too.......
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. (Wayne Dyer)
ps: In my view, a helpful thing one can do if one is troubled with "flashbacks" of troublesome things one has seen, can be to replace those images with positive, happy and peaceful images. I know from personal experience that it is not an easy thing to do, but I encourage you to give it a try.
(However, if your flashbacks are interfering with your quality of life, may I suggest that you seek out a health professional.)
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