Growing Up: An experience not worth cherishing.

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others..

I thought about getting to write back my blog a long back but every time my laziness overpowered me. Finally, I made up my mind to write something on my 21st birthday and voila, here I am..Late by 3 days.

So I celebrated my 21st birthday 3 days back and felt special for a day and then I am back to being normal me. That is one thing I abhor about growing up. We stop being happy for too long. I guess the reasons for happiness is inversely proportional to our age. As we grow up, we are not just contended with simple pleasures of life. We as a human collectively are sadist creatures. We limit our own happiness. 

Yes, I miss being a kid. I can give anything to be that 6 month old infant whose world was his mother, to be that 2-3 years old toddler whose day was made just by fistful of cashew-nuts, to be that 5-6 year old stripling whose greatest pleasure in world was a tricycle ride around in colony, to be that 10 year old boy who was just excited by the thought of writing with ball-pens in school instead of pencil, to be that 12 year old lad for whom "Pikachu vs Charlizard" held much more importance than "Trump vs Clinton", to be that 15 year old teenage boy who was fancied by scooty run on electric battery and who used to get heightened sense of adrenaline rush just by smuggling a pen drive full of GTA games and installing them to his dad's PC and yes couple of extra hours of television always made the day memorable.

See the pattern, the wants increased with each passing year and life started complicating itself. Happiness was still so handy then. I honestly don't know what went wrong and when did I transformed into a man. Life became hard and happiness needed to be looked for . Today, a toy worth 20k ( a cell phone), a bigger toy worth 50k (a laptop), a two wheeler running on exorbitant fuel or a four wheeler 20 times the price of two wheeler is not enough to give happiness worth cherishing compared to a tricycle which needed just air in tire or a electrically charged motorbike which used to keep me excited for months.

The happiness because of this materialistic gains is so ephemeral. So what changed in a span of half a decade? Apart for physique and body structure, a most important thing changed. Our minds started looking for external esteem from people around us. We were so busy thinking about others around us that we had little time to ask our hearts how it felt. And once in a blue moon, if we ever did what our heart wanted, it hardly ended well. We are more worried about the acceptance we may get from the society than what makes us happy internally. That is the reason why some of us craves for all those likes on our photos and our statuses on social media and are busy uploading them instead of being in the moment and enjoying it. 

One more reason why I feel we are less and less happy with each passing day is that we are burdened with responsibilities,duties and expectations and it leaves us with very little room to be happy. All through life most people just cannot wait for the chance to become a "grown up" . Anticipating the chance to have more fun and more opportunities to do things that were always looked upon as being mature and cool. But when I realized I have turned 21 this year I decided on the one thing that I have wanted to hurry up and happen but now wish would slow down just a little bit. I look back at a time 3 year me foolishly applying my mother's lipstick all over my face, putting both the feet in over sized dad's shoes and taking a polythene bag in hand and pretending to go to office and falling down and crying just after one step. Yes, I was senseless but those memories still bring a smile on my face. Now that I am grown up and doing all "sensible" things, I don't think any of them would make me smile 10-20 years down the line.

I wish I had never grown up. It’s just too sudden. It feels as if it was only yesterday that when I had no worries. I could look back and have no regrets. I didn’t feel as if I had to satisfy someone for it to be okay to be me. Life is full of responsibilities.When I was little the future was so far away I didn’t give a damn about what I wanted to be when I grew up. “I can think about that later.” Now, everything is so close. We didn’t even realize the journey we’ve been through, we were just living. The world we knew was lost its innocence. It’s gotten colder. Colder than I could remember. Our eyes have opened. As soon as you grow up, it’s not the same. People around you, wanting to pursuit you to their costumes and turn you into one of them. Protecting yourself from the outside world, you wouldn’t want to talk to no one. How can you know for sure someone is not going to destroy you? Who will betray you? 

Growing up hurts, it’s full of nostalgia. Remember the old cartoons you used to laugh your butt off, the times when you couldn’t stay up passed nine o’clock. Having that pure untouched mind of your own. The hardest decision was what ice cream flavor you wanted. Why do some people want to run away from their childhood? The silliness and the goofiness. What happened to having a good time playing outside with your friends or siblings? They want to grow up already. They want to get out of school as soon as possible they want to go away to college to be away from their parents. To a new apartment, a new city. Yes, you are alone now. Yes, you can do whatever you want now. Yes, it’s your house, but it’s not the home you grew up in. It doesn’t have that warm feeling. You may say that you are glad to be away from your “naggy” parents. One day they will be gone. You are getting older, they are getting older too. You’ll get homesick every now and then. Your mom’s old cooking, playing with your dad outside. Once you grow up, it’s gone.

If only I had a remote control for life. I would go back to the good times, forward the sad times, re-live the awesome times, and pause the moments that are slipping through my fingers. But times won’t stop. Time waits for no one. That’s what memories are for. Sure, some may not be as happy as others, but they are proof that you lived, you had a good time, you cried, and you are human. Memories are with us forever. To teach us. To remind us. To show us, that growing up is part of life. You are born, you grow up, and you die. That’s how’s been. That’s how it will always be.Although, I think everyone needs to grow up at some point in their lives, we should still remain a little kid at heart. We need to keep the youthful happiness in our hearts for the future. We can remain grown up, but with that childish happiness still inside of us. We can grow up, without ever having to grow up.