This morning I read a status update from someone I know . The status was about how he misses childhood and about the pains of growing up and learning to behave so as to be accepted by society.Usually I have a similar feeling. But just today quite contrarily it was different.
This took me by surprise. Yes my own thoughts seemed to be playing a game of battleship with me, hiding the potential arm carriers quite effectively.
I looked back and found the joys in my childhood as we do. But if you are not magnanimous you can see those days were not devoid of pain either. Protected by family and friends growing up had its own share of miseries. Childhood agony pays dues to expectation from parents, bullies at school, sexual harassment (even at an age when you do not even know to name your body parts) and most of all, your attempts at keep being the moon-of-the-eyes to parents,teachers and all people known and unknown.
I guess we all(most of us) grow up and look back and think only of the flowery past when we got birthday gifts and when daddies carried sleepy us from the sofa to the bed and moms kept awake through the nights to ease our pain during fever. But that was not all right!
My point is growing up and our years as grown ups are not that bad either. Yes we have more complex issues like broken relationships, ailing parents, going haywire siblings, nagging children or nagging parents to have children, mortgages, education loans, relocation from city to city, recession etc etc etc.
Twenty years later we will think back with agonizing toothache , knee cramps, spartan medicare, irresponsible children and paint rosy pictures of the past .We will remember the fun and laughter with friends, the trips we had taken, the visits we made back at home, the early growing up years of our children and miss them over and over and sigh.
All that is needed is a little distance from the time.
And then one day all will be over.
WWW 