Cost of Knowing

Some happiness depends on not knowing, and once you know, you can’t get back. The child’s joy, the contented spouse, the loyal citizen—each rests on something unexamined, and examination ends it. What follows isn’t unhappiness exactly. It’s the recognition that the earlier peace was a room you can no longer enter, because you are no longer the person small enough to fit.

We call this growing up, or waking up, or disillusionment, depending on how much we resent it. The vocabulary is a tell. Something was lost, and the word we pick decides whether we’re allowed to mourn it.

You don’t have to wish you’d stayed ignorant to admit that ignorance was doing work nothing else does. Knowledge buys clarity at the price of a peace it cannot restore. That is the trade, and it is not optional.