Cats, Ignorance & Bliss.

Could being somewhat simple be a good thing?

I stare at the cat nested so comfortably on the sofa and wonder whether the simple, minimalist life that she is leading is more comfortable and peaceful than the complex, difficult life led by her owners who operate in an intricate world with many rules and high expectations. The cat closes her eyes slightly and purrs. I could see her grey, short-hair glisten in the lamplight in my living room and her chubby, round figure stretched out on as far as possible as she lay there and napped peacefully.

You have to live in a complicated way and to be a complicated person with many complex skills if you are going to succeed in society's incessantly fluctuate world during your evanescent life. As humans capable of high-levels of thought, we complicate things with our endeavors. But these complications are not natural; rather, they are constructed.

What should we do then? Revert back to our simple modes of life where everybody lived on farms or were hunter-gatherers? Or is it possible, in a technologically advanced civilization, to lead a simple life?

To me, the core source of humanity's mass-neurosis, our struggle with stress, our excess grief, is our limited processing capability. We are finite creatures living in the Information Age with limitless information at our finger tips. How do we process it all? How do we make decisions given we can no longer know all the possible facts? This realization of our physical limitations can be frustrating at times.

You see, the cat eats, the cat sleeps, and the cat plays. This sums up the life of a cat. Human beings, on the other hand, have no such limitations because of our brains. But great opportunity comes at a great cost. People become more advanced and they outrun themselves. Perhaps we should learn from the cat and keep a mindset that is content with simple things, while reaching for extravagant goals. Maybe the proverb was true that "with great wisdom comes great adversity". If adversity is a consequence of moving forward, then shouldn't we at least develop good coping habits to endure such adversity? Small things such as enjoying a simple meal, or an engaging conversation with a friend. Perhaps happiness is a state of mind that must be nourished with small, digestible experiences that we make pleasurable by choosing to enjoy them rather than overlooking them as insignificant in our monumental pursuits.