The True Meaning Behind "Ignorance is Bliss"

Imagine you're watching some children playing, and they are properly playing. They are running, they are laughing, and they are completely lost in the moment. They have no sense of the future. They have no sense of the responsibilities, the pain, and the loss of adulthood. And something in your chest tightens. You feel a deep and indescribable sadness because you know something of the world that they do not.

In 1742, the poet Thomas Gray stood across a river watching his old school and boys at play, and he wrote a poem from which we get one of the most famous lines in the English language: 'Ignorance is bliss. 'Tis folly to be wise.'

We say that line now as a kind of shrug. It's a joke about not reading the news or not wanting to know the football results. But Gray didn't mean it to be so flippant or so small, but a reflection of the saddest part of the human condition. Children play and are lost in the moment because they do not know. But one day they will.

Rousseau took this line of argument, and he argued for the first time in recorded philosophy that childhood should be cherished and protected as its own thing. Do not give children adult worries, and adult problems. Do not tarnish the golden years by ruining their happy ignorance. Let the children play, because there is nothing sadder than to watch a child who has to grow up too quickly and learn to be an adult before their time.