Growing Up
“My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight” – Robert Frost
Ah, childhood. The time when studies was divisible between class work and homework and was just a irksome hindrance to play time, when math was merely 7 * 5 = 35 without brackets and without signs that I am unable to find on the keyboard, when all plants had were roots, stems, leaves and flowers and what went on within these things were their business alone, when fairy tales hadn’t lost their charm and when the darkness demanded unexplained fear. When the panorama of your future was painted with every color of the rainbow and the possibilities of what you may become was countless. When being a driver, lost in the heavenly orbit of the steering wheel was just as good as a becoming a disease fighting doctor. When ignorance truly was bliss but we were too ignorant to realize what bliss meant. And as the earth kept revolving around the sun, round and round again, slowly we shed our innocence, embraced knowledge, lost our ignorance and grew few hints of cynicism. Cynicism perhaps, is the unwanted but unavoidable offshoot of growth. Innocence and knowledge never agree on their philosophies, innocence lives within its protective shell of unanalyzed and unquestioned delight, knowledge reveals a face of the world smothered with shades of grey, shows every entity inevitably has a good side and a bad side. Perhaps the one who achieves absolute knowledge will either be a self-sacrificing philanthropist or a miserable and lonesome misanthrope.
But then we were neither, our journey though a decade or so old, was still fresh. Changes were a rife though. Science somehow was divided into three different versions of personal nightmares. Plants started having a food factory in their leaves, numbers started having small annoying dots in between them, orbits became elliptical and not oval, history changed from ‘once upon a time’ to 6th December 1988 and ‘thou’ was no longer a misspelled word. The thickness of our books, which kept on increasing became ‘inversely proportional’ to our marks. The rain lost its grandeur and even became a nuisance. The adults couldn’t decide on our maturity level, we were either too young to be performing such profound deeds or too old to be doing such childish misdemeanors. And we found out we could no longer waste our future lives on useless jobs that included driving someone else’s car while they enjoyed the luxurious cushions of the back seat. No, now we wanted to buy cars in the future, not be employed to drive them. We lost our first few options of what we would become. This loss however would be nothing compared to what growth would do to us next.
Our education system decided to make us choose between murdering our scientific ambitions or our artistic inclinations or our commercial brilliance. They asked “Do you want to become a scientist, a businessman or an artist?”, and we had to answer. The possibility of becoming a great businessman cum painter cum engineer no longer existed. We had to decide. The system demanded sacrifices and we were obliged to offer our dreams. We chose. If were a student of arts we were unaware of what happened in the business section of education. Our knowledge started taking a single minded course. We became aware of the way an acid reacts with a base to produce salt but about how gracefully color flows off a brush and onto a canvas we knew nothing. Our window of options of future lifestyles diminished to a few choices. And then we were divided even further.
Now we had to choose again. And we lost another arm of possibilities. If we had decided on science, we had to choose between a pursuit of physics or biology or chemistry, or perhaps a medical degree or a degree in engineering. Every choice we made the future grew smaller. We plunged deeper and deeper chasing a singular purpose and lost so many other offers life had once presented. We kept losing the colors of variety from our lives. But what could we have done? This was the primary criteria of growth. Life always offers choices; it is either this or that and every time we chose ‘this’ we lost ‘that’. Why is it that growth requires such sacrifices? When the world has so much to offer, why is it necessary that we confine ourselves to a singular path? Of course there are a few who pursue all that their heart desires and defy what the world demands, but we are normal people. We follow. We choose and we devote ourselves to our choices.
Up till now we’ve been asked to make a lot of choices and we’ve done all that was required. Now when we look back and take a moment review our choices and ask ourselves, were they correct? What would our answers be? Maybe they were right, maybe they weren’t. A few among us brave/stupid enough may even decide to go back and start all over again, which is commendable/condemnable. For the rest of us, we hope that even if it may not appear now, perhaps in the future we’ll come to the conclusion that life was lived right, that all those choices that we made were justified, all those options we left behind were excusable and the life we are living is the life we always wanted to live. The future still awaits with fresh options, demanding more sacrifices. And we will offer those sacrifices, we have to, it’s the price we must all pay to be called a ‘grown up’. Life, we realize, is a journey from “you can become whatever you want to be” to choosing a single paying job to sustain our way of existence. And when asked why it is this way, an infuriating answer awaits: This is the way of the world. And since we are a part of this accepted society, we must do as it says.
A bitter regret does sting my heart, I do not wish to go back and change my choices, I have made peace with my decisions, I just wish I had the knowledge I have now when I was making my choice between becoming a driver or a doctor.
If your gonna screw up, do it while you're young. Older you get, the harder it is to bounce back.”- Winston Groom
