She was born in the 40’s. Everything was so different back
then. Segregation, not much technology, and so life for her was pretty basic.
As time progressed she stayed the same. The years only changed her appearance
not her life.
She repeated herself. Day after day doing the same things
she did the day before.
Morning: Coffee, cereal, and banana.
Insulin.. Snack
Lunch: Sandwich, chips, and a diet dr. pepper
Insulin.. Snack
Dinner: Baked chicken, squash, baked potato, (anything else
she had that was in the kitchen.) and a diet dr. pepper.
Insulin. Bath. Bed.
Her life depended on the predictability that she had come to
know. She did watch television quite a bit. Watching the same shows, news at 5
am, price is right at 9am, her soap opera at 10am, Maury at 1pm, and later on
watching one her favorites wheel of fortune at 5pm.
I believe that she did this because she did not like change.
Technology was just too much to understand for her, she liked the older days
where life was easy so she keep her life to revolve around how it had always
been.
She was so full of knowledge. When she talked I always had
to listen even if she wasn’t talking to me. Everything that came out of her
mouth was with reason and experience. Every time it rained it was always “Make
sure Destiny is covered up she doesn’t need to be getting pneumonia.” I always
loved how older people always assume everything will cause pneumonia. But we
would always listen every time she would say that and when it rained or snowed
I always had something covering me up. To this day my mother and I will find us
saying, “Oh granny would be happy if she saw you all covered up, or granny
would have a fit if she saw you not covered up.”
One thing she really did not like was the atm or paying
debit at the grocery store. Something about it was just so hard for her each
time she went she would need help or if she couldn’t find help she found that
writing checks were a lot easier. But that makes sense. Writing checks has
nothing to do with changing technology like how using a debit card and having to
put your pin in to pay for things did.
She found comfort in older things. Not the finer things,
they could keep that. She found comfort in things that have been familiar to
her since she was a younger girl and that was quite some time ago. She found
comfort in reliability. She knew what was right and wrong. She was ignorant to
changes in her life. When I think of “Ignorance is Strength” I automatically
think of my grandmother. She very much disliked anything about technology. Up
until her death she was still using the same go phone she had for years and
still needed help sometimes to understand it. To me that is the real definition
of Ignorance is Strength. She was able to block out all the unnecessary
material things in life and she was able to focus on what life really was.
Technology and innovations didn’t block her from her life she was able to live
out her life just as she wanted to.
Ignorance is Power. Ignorance is Strength.
