What does it mean to be blissful

Bliss is not ignorance, it is actually the opposite of it. Is an intense and constant state of happiness with the presence of knowledge.

As children we are innocent because we are ignorant by nature, as we mature we gain experience, with that experience we also lose our innocence.

Achieving happiness through ignorance as an adult it is impossible. I would say that not only ignorance is not bliss but the opposite of it, hell on earth.

There is a myth that some of us still believe, the myth of an easy life, a life free of failure, worries, rejection, sadness and anger or most of the other negative aspects of life. I never meet someone with an easy life, I have meet some happy and fairly successful people but they had problems and they were stressed like everybody else. By no stretch of imagination this people had it easy.

My definition for bliss is the normalization of the negative aspects of life. It is easy to be happy when good things are happening to you, but if your general state of well being ends when with the experience of good things for about half of your life you are going to be pretty miserable.

One of the first skill I teached myself when I was a tenager was to play guitar, as a new player I started with a chord it took me multiple tries to get that cord sounding good. The first day I practiced until I got frustrated and quit, the second day I nearly got it to sound decent but I still didn't developed enough strength in my fingers to put enough pressure on the strings, so it still sounded a little off but by this point I felt like a demigod. My assumption at that point was that the hard work was done and from now one it is going to be easy, so as I moved to the next chord I wanted to learn I discovered that it was just as hard as the first one.

So I still had to work hard and make small gradual progress but because I wasn't expecting for that to happen I was also miserable and frustrated. For the next years as I practiced and learn progressively more complex things I pretty much maintained the same attitude, which made my experience of learning how to play pretty hellish, with the exception of the times when I would realize I have made some progress.

In order to be blissful you have to realize that it will never get easy, no matter where you are and what do you accomplish you can't escape the negative aspects of life. Why not turn the tables and expect that every day of your life is going to include some hardship. If you expect failure every day it is no longer a tragedy as much it is a certainty.

There are really only four big negative aspects that you will experience almost every day of your life:

1. rejection

2. failure

3. sadness

4. anger

*There are more nuances to emotions like sadness and anger but the essence of your negative emotions is the fight or flight response the emotional impulses behind it is anger or sadness, when I say sadness and anger I do include all the nuances like: rage, frustration, depression, anxiety etc.