Growing Up
This is an in-Medium honest stream-of-consciousness piece about something that’s been on my mind. It may appear unstructured. Please overlook its faults.
I used to think of growing up as an event in my far future, a point in my life where I’d somehow be surer of the world and what I want to do. An age where I can have the freedom that a Christian Malayali kid always craves. To somehow, one day look out in the world and not be afraid of it. But life turned out to be different in many ways. This is my journey and what I want my past self to have known before growing up.
Childhood for me was an awkward, clumsy, not confident and a very insecure place owing to the fact that I was not very physically strong nor was I very active in sports. This made me feel inferior to my peers in many ways. I used to look at the children in the grades above me with awe and respect. I wanted to be like them, to be confident and walk like I owned the world. To not be who I was then, but to be someone better. I was just another weak guy in the land of the strong and good looking.
This handicap wasn’t really a bad thing in retrospect though. It helped me emphatize with people and be more sensitive to their pain. As I listened to people and their problems, I started seeing their joy at witnessing their issues resolved. It made me happy in a way nothing else could. It let me be part of a bigger story, one that wasn’t limited to me. And it was addictive. So, It soon became one of my biggest dreams, to be able to show people that someone cared for them, to absorb their tears. It became my benchmark for success: changing people’s lives.
Was I naive? I don’t know, you tell me. Do I still wish to be that? Hell yes!
I’m now in the third year of my graduation degree and college has been a lot of what I hoped for in my feverish childhood fantasies. I have done a lot of things I’ve always dreamed of doing, like taking roadtrips, laying in the middle of a street at night, getting people to read my poems, having a music collection, reading many books, having a phone to read books on and so on.
But in the course of finally growing up I left a lot behind. Much of my childhood identity was shed along the way. Including my unconditional acknowledgment of AND my unending desire to share in — a person’s pain, my wide reasonless smile, my dreams of changing the world.
Somehow I found myself trapped in a race for survival, just like all the others. Everything I thought that I would do differently from the rest of the ‘mice’ has disappointed me. And most of all, I understood that I couldn’t soak the pain of the world and come out of the other side untouched. I had been broken to the point of not wanting to ever feel that much, ever. Numbness overcame me and everything that once made me special was somehow lost in the stampede I led, to reclaim my life from the clutches of my demons.
All this I say just because I must, to maybe provide some kind of understanding of context to how I chanced upon the realizations that I have listed below.
Time really, actually, sacchi mein doesn’t wait for anybody.
And
You are replaceable. Sachiwala. Not kidding.
Someone once said,
“Grown ups are just children with lesser imagination and fewer smiles.”
But it’s not all bad, growing up has made me realize the value of many things, family, money, honesty and just principles.
Adele instagrammed a photo that actually says everything there is to say about growing up.
And this is something I wrote after I read it.
In conclusion,
If anyone younger than me is reading this or if this article has timetravelled to my past where I am reading it, then ,
whether you enjoy or don’t enjoy every moment, remember them well.
And yeah! growing up is not going to transform you, you’re just going to do the same thing you’re doing now.
So if you need to change,
Do it now.