There is peace in not knowing
Last week I was with some friends celebrating the birthday of a great friend and among the conversations we had was that of traveling. I confessed my desire to go to an area I do not know in Venezuela called Choroní and one of my friends, whom I appreciate very much because she was my professor in undergraduate and graduate school, warned me that the sea in that area is very rough, that the roads are terrible and that when you have such beautiful beaches nearby, as we have, a trip to Choroní is a waste. Conclusion: I don't want to visit Choroní so much anymore.
Nowadays, it is difficult not to be informed. Even if you are not one of those people who are glued to social networks, cell phones, computers or TV sets, there is always someone who tells you, who informs you, who spreads the gossip without you asking. It is easy to live oversaturated with information.
I have friends who compete, as if they were journalists, to give the scoop.
Did you find out? - they ask via WhatsApp and without waiting for an answer, they send you what they think “you should know”.
Bad and good news are forwarded without stopping to think if the recipient is interested in knowing, if the news is useful to him or what is worse, if the news can affect the other person.
This weekend was a strong one for Venezuelans: everyone was talking about the imprisonment of the promoters of the parallel dollar, the raid on the properties of the founder of the El Dorado platform and the drying up of activities in our country, the food inflation rate (which exceeded 66%) and how now, since there is no parallel dollar, how merchants are charging at the euro price. So it is no wonder that last night I had a nightmare in which the government was chasing me because I was carrying a hundred dollar bill clenched in my hands. The good thing was that when I woke up there were no cops; the bad thing was that there was no bill either.
I remember I had a doctor friend who had pancreatic cancer and he, because of his profession, knew every single thing that was going to happen to him. He would tell me:
_Fea (he called me that out of affection), the white blood cell levels will go up, the red blood cell levels will go down, therefore the hemoglobin will also decrease and then the heart attack will come. - He told me serenely and I, next to him, felt that I didn't want to know, but I was afraid to tell him that because I thought that maybe talking about it was good for him.
Personally, I admit that I like to be informed, but there are days when I prefer not to know anything, to disconnect from the world, to live in my own cloud. I feel that the more I know about things, the more I worry, the more I think, the more unhappy I feel. Knowledge entails responsibilities and one has enough responsibilities in life without knowing things that were better not to know...
All images are from my personal gallery and the text was translated with Deepl
Thank you for reading and commenting. Until next time, friends