Childhood — Those were the days
By Mrunmai Menon
Have you ever tried giving a toddler a pair of glasses? Most likely not. If you do, you’re not getting them back. Not the way they were, at least.
Toddlers are generally known for their tendency to bang on things and throw them around. They enjoy the sound of such activities — literally and figuratively. “Oh, I have a thing in my hand? Let me throw it! Or should I bang it? I’ll try both!!” Essentially, if a kid sees a thing, he has to do something with it (And generally something innocently violent) even though they have no idea what it’s for. Almost every parent has a long list of things their baby has broken (or eaten) and in many cases, this list continues to grow well into adulthood.
However, somewhere along the line, from throwing things to throwing tantrums and then eventually throwing parties — we stop doing this. Not throw things, because let’s face it — anger management is not our forte. But throwing things just to see what they sound like. To do something — something silly, irrelevant, new or totally unimportant –just for the sake of doing it. For the ‘sound’ of it.
Why does this happen?
At some point of time during our formative years, we go from eating mud to judging it. At this point, we learn about the nature of things, about consequence, what’s acceptable and what isn’t and also what’s edible and what’s not.
Things like reward –punishment start making sense and the fear of authority also rears its (ugly) head. And depending on who’s teaching us these things — it can do two things to us: it can either make us happy people or successful people. And they’re not the same thing.
Unfortunately, too many people in our life are constantly trying to make us the latter. To get better, faster, stronger, taller, smarter, sharper, have more things, more friends, more money, more power — you get the picture. We’ve all been through the factory where success stories are manufactured. The problem here is that in a factory, the focus is always on results. It doesn’t matter what happens on the assembly line, or the conveyor belt, the end result must adhere to specifications. And it is this unflinching focus on results that is turning us all into very successful people and also very bored people.
“This unflinching focus on results is turning us all into very successful people and also very bored people.”
As a child, do you remember taking your report card up to your parents? For most people this was generally a highly unpleasant journey. School’s out now but we’re still on that journey, constantly taking our report cards up to our friends, bosses, co-workers, girlfriends/boyfriends, husbands, acquaintances, shop-keepers, that rickshaw driver who cut into our lane, the vegetable vendor, the watchman. We carry it around with us — keeping score or tallying marks for every single activity we do — whether it is making a presentation at work, buying the wife a gift, taking our parents for dinner or even just hanging out with friends. The report card is omnipresent. And the journey is still always unpleasant.
“School’s out now but we’re still on that journey, constantly taking our report cards up to our friends, bosses, co-workers, girlfriends/boyfriends and husbands.”
Because you see, seem as it may such, many things in life are not about the result. They are about ‘the thing’ in itself; and the joy of doing it. Not about the results, but about the process. For such things, one doesn’t need report cards, but a blank piece of paper. No specifications, only curiosity. It can be anything — almost. A child sees endless possibilities of enjoyment in a spoon. Of course, as mature and intelligent adults, we require more sophisticated toys, but you can bet the child is having a far better time any day. We did too, when we could play for hours together with a spoon.
As children we weren’t concerned with where this was going, what we were going to get out of it, how is this going to help us, how it’s going to look on our resume, what it’s going to do to our report card. We did things just because we felt like it, for the sound of them.
“To be a child again requires the company of other children — people doing things without an agenda and without the aim of a result”
But it’s hard to keep doing things that way when everyone’s always walking about with report cards around their neck, asking us for ours. To be a child again requires the company of other children — people doing things without an agenda and without the aim of a result. And when you do find such people, then that’s called going back to your childhood, for good!
About Brigge:
Brigge is an upcoming activity-based social network for people to do exciting things with like-minded folk.
Subscribe now to be invited for early access.
