"Life was simpler back in childhood" - it is something that we all would admit to for some reason or the other. Some of us feel the demanding work absorbs us and we miss on to the important things in life, others think of the freedom and innocence of childhood which is lost on reaching adulthood. While there are still others who are tired of the complexities of life and want to escape it by becoming a child again. Have we ever wondered how big a small problem seemed to us back then? I remember once while coming home from school,I lost my handkerchief on the way and I sobbed on my way home. Now it is easy to think of those little troubles and laugh at the trivial issues that were the cause of those precious tears.
I have never regretted any phase of growing up. They say you must accept ageing gracefully,which I always have because somehow I've never found anything to wail about that is now bygone. Missing some things is quite obvious but there is always something else that life has in store. Moments come and go and you never come to know where they fleeted. Moments turn into precious memories with time. The time that is gone is like a loss in some way, a loss that creates a void which in turn doesn't allow the same moment to repeat. Looked at it this way, voids seem like selfish beings,saving the best. Voids preserve precious moments, freeze time in those moments,moments which you always want to look back at and cherish. What if there were no voids and there was room for time to repeat itself,moments to form patterns? Would these moments be any precious?
Well I do believe life was simpler back in childhood in the context of people and relationships. Back then things were ordered,people fell into order almost automatically. My world was divided into a sharp contrast of black and white. There were fewer people circling around my life and thus emotions and attachments were easy to cope with. The first time life offered me shades of grey,i seemed to be a fallible kid. I was shocked by the abruptness of life. When you have accepted certain ideas and build your world around them only to realize later that it is simply illusions that you were chasing,it is the most shattering experience ever.
As you grow older,your horizons tend to expand,making space for more people and newer relations. Attachments and detachments toy around,society starts dominating your thoughts. This in turn calls for more complexities in life. Now your world isn't as simple as black and white but includes a lot many ambivalent shades of grey. Whether to stay glum and desolated with the grey towering over you or to accept it as an inevitable part of life is upto each of us. The most complex of complexities that i seem to be facing is subjectivity and relativity. Somethings as I mentioned cannot be measured in two contrasting colours and what becomes an important part of it is your take on things. What often happens is that we tend to get influenced a lot by people's opinions of ourselves and as a result our own opinions get coloured. Well it isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes change of opinion is healthy if it is for a good reason but who decides the good and the bad? It often gets really confusing to know the right from the wrong due to the relativity each situation offers. Sometimes there are rigid two ways to a situation either they are universally made or based on your strong beliefs but most of the times it is upto us to create a belief and take a stand and stick to it with conviction. Decision making is a tough job and to add to the trouble is the dispute of whether to stick by it or to change your mind with time and experience! There isn't a conventional answer to most things in life,for me it eventually comes to following my belief which has withstood time. It isn't easy still,it never has been. I still tend to falter but I don't fall and that is what matters. Life has always been a process,a slow and gradual process of growth,of learning. You never seem to have had enough,never seem to have learnt enough and thus to end the process God created death,a strong end to something which otherwise would've continued on and on for eternity.
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