Can we be both informed and ignorant simultaneously? I heard this term recently and it got me thinking about people who have a habit of hearing the truth and then flippantly deny the truth instead embracing the lies they believe. They reply, "Yea, but..." and seek ways to challenge the truth with feelings and ideas that are unsupported by evidence. In relationships I see this all the time. One partner will accuse the other of some hurtful deed and it doesn't matter what the evidence is that the accusation is wrong. The fist will defend their feelings rather than consider the evidence. What motivates us to willfully choose to believe something that is inherently false?
Fear.
Fear makes us believe the lie rather than be a victim of our perceived reality. We can be afraid of being abandoned, so we find reasons to leave.
We can be afraid of abuse, so we hurt others first. We can be afraid of an affair, so we accuse another mercilessly demanding to be proven wrong. And all the while the thing we fear most is manifested in our mind and supported by our feelings as truth.
I watched a "Christmas" themed movie recently that left me feeling empty. The storyline was interesting as it was about two single people avoiding the judgments of family and friends for not being in a committed relationship during the holidays. The couple who were strangers made an agreement to pretend to be each other's date for Christmas and to meet each holiday for the next year having fun but avoiding anything serious. When it was over, I wondered why the focus of the story was so shallow (fun and sex). It seems all the movies today are about ignoring relationship dysfunction and pretending that sex and alcohol will overcome everything. Friend's with benefits has become perpetual one-night-stands and denial of the pain of loneliness leaves us living both informed and willfully ignorant. It's okay to feel lonely during the holidays. Denying life's realities only prolongs the pains. People want to feel, but fear vulnerability. They choose fun over love because love requires risk.
Author and entrepreneur Brandon Burchard writes in his book, The Motivation Manifesto that communication is the key,
"You can have good work and good economies and good schools and good existence, but without open, creative, magnetic, remarkable, intellectual, fantastical, free-flowing, expansive, and explorative CONVERSATION, there is no passion, no magic, no art, no real learning or progress or fire or love or interest or hope. The world is begging and burning inside for real CONVERSATIONS again. The existential dread is the lack thereof, darkened further by the extraordinary abundance of pre-formed, phony, pessimistic, and position-driven arguments that are mere noise and judgment and stance and fixated absurdity."
I agree with Brandon. Share your heart and be open to listen to the hearts of others. Be open to new paradigms of hope and change. Choose to be informed and deny ignorance. Slip on your boots and look for reasons to challenge your beliefs by walking in truth.