July 2, 2007

• Ignorant
  

  If someone said you were ignorant do you think you might feel insulted? What if they said it in front of others and intoned it? It's a perfectly respectable word but we often give it the power to get our backs up. Lately I've been wondering about ignorance. Mainly because I am so ignorant. While thinking about it I remembered being called ignorant as if it were a name and I don't mean like a person's name. I mean like name-calling. People laughed and I felt put down, abused, which was fine because that was the intention of the person calling me ignorant. Because I was ignorant I didn't know that he was giving me a gift. So, I failed to receive it as a gift and received it instead as he had intended it. As an insult. How ignorant of me. Because of my ignorance I went to the dictionary to see what others had to say about the word. They were straight forward: Ignorant - lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated. They went on to further define the word as lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular. It comes from the Latin ignorant- not knowing, which comes from the verb ignorare and tells me to see ignore. I ignorantly ignored that. Unlearned is similar to ignorant in that it refers to a lack of learning in general or in a specific subject, but it does not carry the same negative connotations.

  To be insulted by being called ignorant today would once again prove my ignorance. Ignorance of the worst possible kind. Ignorance of myself. But ignorance of oneself is not a crime though it can bring with it a good deal of pain. To be unconscious of what goes on in our own psyche is far too common in our society. There is a story about Buddha that I like. A man came to him heaping abuse on him, calling him names and casting insults at him like stones. The Buddha sat calmly and listened to the man. When he'd finished his tirade the Buddha asked him simply, Sir, if someone brings you a gift and you do not receive it with whom does the gift reside. The man answered, Why, with the giver, of course. The Buddha replied, I do not receive your gift. The man realized in a flash the wisdom of such an attitude and response and asked to become a disciple. But why become a disciple? Because the man could see that allowing such a gift to remain with the giver would take a good bit of something of which he had very little. Self-knowlege. But why self-knowledge? Because with enough of it one may master self-control. Oh, how I'd like some more of that. And who wouldn't? Well, the ignorant of course.

  It takes a certain amount of knowledge to be able to value something. Once upon a time, when Art Linkletter had a show on television about kids he demonstrated something I've remembered all these years. He had a father and his very young son sit on a sofa in front of the cameras. Before them was a coffee table with two large, clear glass bowls on it. One was filled with old, crumpled, dirty dollar bills and the other filled with shiny new pennies. The boy was then told he could have as much as he wanted of either. To the father's chagrin the boy began digging into the bowl full of shiny pennies with both hands while the father watched in helpless despair. What Mr. Linkletter was demonstrating was that children valued what they knew and what they knew of money back then was what we gave them. Pennies. My grandfather used to give me a penny on the Saturdays we went to see him. I'd run down to the corner store and buy more candy than you could imagine one could buy with a penny. I doubt I'd have known what to do with a dollar. Today I don't mind being called ignorant. I call myself ignorant. Knowing I'm ignorant means I can find out. I think that's pretty smart.
  

  • 11:32 pm
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