Grief for Ignorance

There comes a moment when you can no longer speak innocently. Not because you have done something wrong, but because you have begun to see.

Ignorance has a certain lightness to it. It leaves room for conviction without burden, for words without weight. You can assert something without feeling its consequences. You can believe without carrying.

But insight changes the temperature of a sentence.

Once you understand what words do — how they direct, exclude, affirm, distort — you can no longer use them carelessly. What was once a thought becomes a position. What was once a feeling becomes a choice.

That is why maturity sometimes feels like loss. Not the loss of youth, but the loss of ease.

Perhaps we do not grieve what we did not know.
Perhaps we grieve the ease with which we were able to say it.

– Stefaan Rits, Note 11 February 2026