Ignorance is Bliss

Sometimes when I eat lunch at one of my junior high schools I eat with the special education class. I really enjoy it. The kids are friendly and enthusiastic, and unlike most of the other students in the school, those qualities never waver. Today as I was eating, I looked across the lunch table at Ayumi. A short, dark-brown haired Japanese girl in her early teens, she likes taking purikura, collecting pictures of horses, and counting the number of everything that is grouped together in English.

She was devouring the handmade lunch her mother had prepared. When she notice me looking at her, she smiled unabashedly and a few morsels of food slipped out of her mouth. She laughed, spilling a little more food and the others around the table laughed with her. She smiled again and tore back into her sushi rolls with a vengeance.

Ayumi is not a bright girl. When she counts, she misses or skips numbers. When she writes, sometimes her letters are backwards. Reading and numbers are extremely difficult for her and she will never be able to hold many jobs that most of us would consider elementary. There is almost nothing I can imagine more frustrating than being limited by your own mind in the way these young children and I don't know anyone who would say that they'd want to trade places with them. But as I look at her from across the table... she is happy. She's fine with the way she is. Oh, I don't doubt that sometimes she wishes she were not so limited, but she is a young, happy girl.

Such a contrast to average teenager I see in the "normal" classes. Always vying for the approval of the most popular boy or girl in class, bitter, angry and resentful of their peers, teachers or parents... in short: normal, human, teenage angst and turmoil. And later in life the pursuit of the opposite sex, money, and materialistic things will completely occupy their every waking thought, what will they be like? What will they live for? Will they (or I) ever truly be happy?

I don't think most people are actually happy. They have good moments, happy moments, but that's not the same thing. True happiness? No. For me, I know I will never be satisfied with my own life, my own personality, my own achievements or even my own appearance. Ayumi will. And that is something to really sit up and take notice of.

People attribute man's great civilization to his intellect. They say it's what separates us from the beasts in the jungle. It's what gives us the ability to build cities and create artistic expression, but it does not make us happy. It gives us ambition and drive. A pre-disposition to change our environment or ourselves, to always strive for that next branch. But always reaching for that next branch, we will never be satisifed with the moment. Never know peace or acceptance. Never know the tao of Pooh. These mentally-challenged youngsters are happier than 99% of the people I know! They accept and are at peace (mostly). The are the greatest Buddhists of all.

So who's better off? Einstein, who worked til his death trying to make two ends of an equation meet that never fit to begin with, or this happy, mentally-challenged little girl?

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