A Do Gooder’s Epiphany

This morning on my way to work I got to thinking about what we owe life. The sun shining on my face, my favourite dinky top 10 tunes blasting, it dawned on me how lucky I was to be here in the world, enjoying such a simple yet exceedingly pleasurable moment. “Don’t we owe it to LIFE to lap up every one of the precious moments we are lucky enough to experience, no matter how simple or seemingly insignificant, as fervently as possible?” I thought.

Now don’t get me wrong…if there is anyone whose life philosophy is to consider the implications of our actions, it’s this girl right here. With practically every decision I make, I do the calculations necessary (sometimes using my fingers, and sometimes with my blonde head cocked to the side in deep concentration) to figure out precisely what type of an impact, for example, my choice to buy a tube of toothpaste (“who produced it? Was it tested on animals? Did the employees in the toothpaste factory receive fair wages?”) will yield.

But I wonder…have I been missing something all along?! Is there something to be learnt from the hedonistic, self-serving, happy and seemingly carefree people I have been known to abhor?! Is there some truth to the belief that sometimes, ignorance is in fact bliss?!

I think that there just might be. That isn’t to say I am about to abandon my philanthropic aspirations or that I am encouraging you to romp pompously through life as though you are the Queen of England, with your nose in the air and you hand on your hips. All I am suggesting is that it might be a good idea for us altruistic souls out there who are determined to save the world, one good deed at a time, to not lose sight of our right (scratch that, our RESPONSIBILITY) to put the burdens we so often carry on our shoulders aside every now and then. We need to remind ourselves that sometimes it is nothing short of necessary to fold up our worries, place them on the top shelf of our closets, and paint the town red (in the figurative sense and not the literal one, which would have us fretting about how spray painting on public property is illegal and could land us with a ticket costing more money than we have in our bank accounts).