Everything has it’s own pros and cons, and the same is applied to learning. The saying “ignorance is bliss” is there for a reason, and it is true in some cases. Everyone learns things that they wish they hadn’t, and even if knowledge is power, there is some knowledge that is unusable or depressing, which makes it something that you might wish that you never learned at the time, but one day it might become vital to understand the world.

I remember when I was a child, I found out that my grandmother had an incurable disease that increasingly diminished her health, so to be with her, my family stayed in our hometown, Karachi, for a while. She was very kind to me and I watched her get worse and worse. I was a child so I didn’t understand the meaning of death and that my grandmother was dying, but I did understand that something was making my mother sad. Almost every night we spent in my grandmother’s house, my mother used to sleep by her mother’s bed, and sometimes I would see her crying whenever she thought we weren’t watching. I didn’t understand death, but I did understand sadness, and seeing my mother was in that state was something I don’t ever want to witness again. Those nights always made me wonder why my mother was sad, and why do I have to understand sadness. I hated the thought of sadness and despair, and to witness my mother like that, even when my grandmother was accepting of her fate, was more than any child should witness.

During the time when we were with my grandmother, I used to think, whenever I cry, Mama always makes me happy. I should try to do the same for her. But nothing I did would make her feel better. I never could help her like she always helped me. I tried to make her laugh, I did tricks and tried to play games with her, but nothing seemed to change her mood. What was the point of understanding anything if I couldn’t do anything about it? Why did I need to know about pain and suffering, even if on the simplified level of a 4 year old? If I can’t help, then what was the point of knowing? I wish I hadn’t. I wish that no one did. I wish that I didn’t need to try to make my mother smile again, because there shouldn’t have been a reason for her to stop.

Even though those were terrible times, where I wish I hadn’t learned something, knowledge is power. Because I learned those things, there are new horizons that I can now explore. During those woeful times, I couldn’t have understood the hidden knowledge that I gained, but in retrospect, I can now see that those were lessons that were better learned sooner than later. Imagine if I still had the mindset of the 6 year old me, how could I understand what is happening around me? How would I be able to recognise the terror people go through and how would I answer the call for help?