Cling To Ignorance, Pass It Off As Innocence
Samm Sack
Co-Editor
“I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence.” -Sworn In, Opportunist
It was a pretty statue, a classy cream color and with childish beauty.
As the years passed, the little girl holding the watering can turned a yellowing ivory, and cracks formed up her arms and face. Her eyes were chipped, so the pleasant look of calm looked more like disapproval. Yet, she still clings to the little girl she used to be ten years before, even with dirt caked into her nails and a weathered-down soul. To me, the statue rotting away in my backyard always mimicked what “innocence” looks like.
For being a piece of elegant glass, she’s more human than most of us.
Because we all begin as she did: we’re innocent and young, beautiful and clean of consciousness. Corruption and grief takes our years away from us, and we turn out repulsive and disgusting, for the most part. There’s blood on our hands and a foul taste on our tongues. Yet we still claim we are as pure as we started.
There is an abundance of girls walking around with a self-inflicted blindfold on, and they have the audacity to complain about the view. Who claim to be the beautiful little fools Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby” so cautiously described, but their blind indulgence doesn’t make them superior: it makes them sidekick to the chaos.
Boys take on danger like they’re fearless, but how exactly is submitting to instability due to the influence of peers “fearless”? I think they’re horrified, threatened into the very actions that make them feel empowered.
The thing about false ignorance is that it gives way to the idea that blunt choices were silly mistakes, or avoiding guidance only bypassed being misled. However, those excuses are accepted daily because she just doesn’t know any better, or because he has a case of affluenza. It’s like we’re covering up a pile of dirt, spray painting it gold and placing a pretty little ribbon in its hair.
I don’t like the idea of skipping around a field of ash and claiming that it’s a meadow of flowers because I refuse to look down and accept what the world really is. There are horror stories of children starving on the streets, but the majority of my peers complain about the average school lunch that’s been fed to them on repeat.
Moreover, I’ve heard that a mistake can only be made once. After that, it’s a choice. Which makes sense, but no one starts the tally marks until they get into trouble. Then, the apologizing begins and they claim to have made been in naiveity, even though they’ve participated in those activities multiple times, or they knew exactly what they were getting into.
Sometimes blocking the world out just seems easier. Sometimes listing off excuses because we’re young and harmless gets us out of trouble.
Those things don’t keep us young, though. They don’t keep us from shedding off the innocence we were born with. They only cover us with blankets of ignorance, making for us a bed that is irresistible but laced with corruption.
