THE WEIGHT OF KNOWING

The frustration of being aware eats me alive — but so does oblivion.

They say half knowledge is more dangerous than none, so I find myself forever choosing: do I walk away from a conversation I half-overheard, or do I chase it to its end? Neither feels like safety.

If you’re not socially, politically, culturally aware — do you even have the right to speak? I think I may have forfeited that right somewhere along the way. Now, every word I utter feels like a confession, and everything I write must be written in blood.

But what can I say? I am still, like you, human — someone who detests not knowing, yet quietly wonders whether she wanted to know at all. Half the things we do aren’t born of will. They come from a manufactured sense of duty — to the world, and to ourselves.

Take familial bonds, for instance. I have a strange relationship with belonging. I crave it and yet, at times, it suffocates me. I love people and their warmth, but there are moments when solitude is the only thing I want. Perhaps half-knowledge isn’t so terrible when it comes to the people we love. We claim our love for someone partly because we don’t know them entirely. Full knowledge might be the end of wonder.

No news is good news — or so they say. But no news from a loved one will quietly dismantle your world. These sayings contradict each other, and yet we carry them all. I wish I didn’t know them either. But then — how would I write?

So here we are. Know too much, and you’re a geek. Know too little, and you’re a fool. In a world where information lives at our fingertips, ignorance is no longer a choice we get to make. The only freedom left is choosing not to know more.

And even that, we rarely exercise.