I was on my toes searching for a few books on music (classical) and came across these thirteen-year-old's searching for twilight posters. I smiled at them. A cynic smile. Thought to myself will they ever grow out of it? This whole scenario was quite amusing. One shouts excitedly calling the other from one end of the mall and then they saying ‘Oh god He’s so cuuuute!” together. What unity. It made me feel like telling them “Please for heaven sake, there are way better things then stupid fantasies and childish heroes. There’s life.”
While I was driving back I realized I was no different from those countless other hypocrites who put a face of being ‘matured’ and still being ‘short-sighted’ as well as ‘narrow-minded’. I did that once too. Jumping around when I was thirteen and yelling my favorite actor’s name and writing him all over my book. Then what right had I to feel the disgust when two friends did the same?
I realized a basic tendency of human mind. The feeling of ingratitude. I have forgotten how to thank. I am seventeen but I’m seventeen because all these sixteen years, life let me live and learn, explore and understand, fumble and stammer, smile and reflect. Life gave me reasons to hope but I ignored them all and chose, instead the feelings of repulse and despair, hatred and jealousy, enmity and revulsion. I forgot to thank the years that I spent. The years when picking up the chocolate from the floor and eating was not wrong, when asking about stars and their absurdity was not foolish, when choosing pink over blue was not stupid. So, what if the girls were screaming? Their style of conversing is different than mine but had I not been the same a while back? Why do I then look down onto them and say “oh they’ll grow out of it.” Did I want to grow out of that feeling? The feeling where nothing seemed to matter but excitement and joy? Of course, society teaches us to reprimand our actions and it eventually becomes the first rule of ‘growing up’. Learning self control is necessary but then so is being innocent and immature.
People, just like me, tend to forget that there’s life beyond being sophisticated and stern and mature. I wish at that moment I could smile at those girls remembering the time I spent with my friends getting super excited, instead of making the sly face that I was best at.
I guess it applies almost in every aspect of our daily lives. We look down on the people who look down on various castes, religions, cults. Are we any different then? I despise the man who criticizes black people. Does it make the situation any better? Is there any difference between me and that man (who looks down on them)? On the scale of humanity, maybe a fraction, but on the scale of individuality? We are still narrow-minded. The elders in the family always tend to say “I know better.” Sometimes it’s the need to find and know ‘the best’. Of course, I’m not taking sides here by saying that they are never wrong, all I am saying is they may not be always right. But, again, what do we do? repeat the pattern with our kids and they with theirs? will hypocrisy a.k.a. idiotism ever stop? We need to stop living in boundaries and expand. Its alright to get hurt. Didn't it hurt when we first fell of the bi-cycle? Did that stop us from riding it again? Why give up when falling down is only the validity of moving ahead!
Maybe its good from time to time to relinquish the thirst of being a prudent aristocrat (a normal person) and be someone different. Someone ready to learn, and learn to explore, and explore to wonder, and wonder to find, to find solace in the same heroes and fantasies. So much for growing up? The whole process to ‘being’ needs to go through ‘becoming’. I guess I don’t mind being a ‘wannabe’ as long as I know who I’ll end up like. Me.
While I was driving back I realized I was no different from those countless other hypocrites who put a face of being ‘matured’ and still being ‘short-sighted’ as well as ‘narrow-minded’. I did that once too. Jumping around when I was thirteen and yelling my favorite actor’s name and writing him all over my book. Then what right had I to feel the disgust when two friends did the same?
I realized a basic tendency of human mind. The feeling of ingratitude. I have forgotten how to thank. I am seventeen but I’m seventeen because all these sixteen years, life let me live and learn, explore and understand, fumble and stammer, smile and reflect. Life gave me reasons to hope but I ignored them all and chose, instead the feelings of repulse and despair, hatred and jealousy, enmity and revulsion. I forgot to thank the years that I spent. The years when picking up the chocolate from the floor and eating was not wrong, when asking about stars and their absurdity was not foolish, when choosing pink over blue was not stupid. So, what if the girls were screaming? Their style of conversing is different than mine but had I not been the same a while back? Why do I then look down onto them and say “oh they’ll grow out of it.” Did I want to grow out of that feeling? The feeling where nothing seemed to matter but excitement and joy? Of course, society teaches us to reprimand our actions and it eventually becomes the first rule of ‘growing up’. Learning self control is necessary but then so is being innocent and immature.
People, just like me, tend to forget that there’s life beyond being sophisticated and stern and mature. I wish at that moment I could smile at those girls remembering the time I spent with my friends getting super excited, instead of making the sly face that I was best at.
I guess it applies almost in every aspect of our daily lives. We look down on the people who look down on various castes, religions, cults. Are we any different then? I despise the man who criticizes black people. Does it make the situation any better? Is there any difference between me and that man (who looks down on them)? On the scale of humanity, maybe a fraction, but on the scale of individuality? We are still narrow-minded. The elders in the family always tend to say “I know better.” Sometimes it’s the need to find and know ‘the best’. Of course, I’m not taking sides here by saying that they are never wrong, all I am saying is they may not be always right. But, again, what do we do? repeat the pattern with our kids and they with theirs? will hypocrisy a.k.a. idiotism ever stop? We need to stop living in boundaries and expand. Its alright to get hurt. Didn't it hurt when we first fell of the bi-cycle? Did that stop us from riding it again? Why give up when falling down is only the validity of moving ahead!
Maybe its good from time to time to relinquish the thirst of being a prudent aristocrat (a normal person) and be someone different. Someone ready to learn, and learn to explore, and explore to wonder, and wonder to find, to find solace in the same heroes and fantasies. So much for growing up? The whole process to ‘being’ needs to go through ‘becoming’. I guess I don’t mind being a ‘wannabe’ as long as I know who I’ll end up like. Me.
