Childhood is sweet, so is adulthood

This post is about growing up and my perspective on this journey from being toddlers to taxpayers. I'm 22, soon to be 23, and as I enter the birthday month and what will be the last month here at the dream university, I realise that growing up has meant different things for different people, especially those I'm surrounded with. While some of us vibe to Zubeen Garg's epic Assamese song 'Jontro' that reminisces the golden days of childhood, some less fortunate ones thank heavens for ending the miserable period that childhood and being a 'dependent' was.

I say this not just from personal experiences on the journey of life, but from observations I've made for quite some time now. Childhood is a beautiful period of life - a chapter where maintaining cordial relationships, being nice even when you don't like a person, thinking about bills, dealing with expectations, failure, and other shit were out of the picture. Childhood is supposed to be that sweet phase of life where all we are concerned about are our games and grades - at least that's what Garg reminisces about in his song. However, this bright picture is the fate of a rare few and for the vast majority, we grow up to be broken colors that can still be used, but with a lot of care, or musical instruments still capable of melody, but with broken chords that need mending. A majority of us grow up to be broken children traumatised by past experiences of parental fights, disharmony, ailments, violence, abuse, penury, neglect, bias and so much more. What do you think is the take of these broken-children-turned-adults on childhood?

I'd say just one word: DARKNESS. Darkness and light are subjective because what's dark for me, might signify light for another. After all, the opportunities we take are chances missed by somebody else! Darkness, in my theory, is that feeling of helplessness, cluelessness, pain, absence of freedom, clarity, stability, happiness, love, health or wealth that makes us feel like we are under huge, thundering clouds that might soon drown us in an ocean of torrential rains! Darkness is the uncertainty that makes a 'peaceful night's sleep' intangible, it's the grave we push ourselves deeper into, every time we face an overwhelming situation. I can go on and on with my metaphors on darkness but I take it that you understand that I'm just trying to indicate earthly struggles here. 

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

So, while childhood is that sunny picture we'd all like to have framed in the living room wall of our house of memories, it can just be another ugly part of someone's life. For us less lucky folks on that childhood bit, adulthood is God's way of compensating (or at least I'd like to believe so). You ask why? 

Once again, I'd say just one word: POWER. I mean, don't you agree that as adults we have the power to voice out our opinions, perspectives, or preferences and stand up for ourselves!? Unless we give another being the power to speak over us ( could be a sibling, a parent, a partner, or even a child), the power to decide lies on our shoulders. That's the point of calling ourselves 'independent' right!? Independence could mean so much more than financial, or professional independence - it's this feeling of not being answerable to anyone for our actions and being in control of our destinies. Adulthood, irrespective of whether you're a university kid like me still living off your parents' money or whether you are that corporate worker living alone in a city, cooking their own meals, paying their own bills, and doing their own laundry; is this chapter of life that brings autonomy and the power to make our decisions and take responsibility of our actions. 

I speak for my tribe when I say, that childhood is sweet but so is adulthood. Yes, living with just the worry of finishing the homework or performing well in that Unit Test was nice, but so is this feeling I get every time I make an impromptu travel plan! I mean, can you imagine the joy felt by a girl out there on her own, without having to return before dusk or worrying about who will pick and drop her!? Or the contentment felt by a guy who can take his bike/car and go for a drive any time of the day/night he feels like? Or the respite found by a smoker/drinker who doesn't feel guilty for smoking/drinking or having to justify how it's something they like without having the need for a third party to come and remind of its repercussions? If you are an adult, with some trauma or baggage from your childhood but now find yourself at a better place as an adult then I'm sure you're just like me and feel that no matter how hard this adulting gets, it's manageable and survivable. Nothing's ever gonna be worse than the voicelessness experienced as kids with independent minds being subdued by external pressure. Nothing better than knowing for a fact that we alone are the pilots of the vehicle of our lives and that makes adulthood, with all its day-to-day struggles, an experience worth having and being grateful for.

Everything we do is and should be a personal choice. No child deserves to be the mediator of parents' fights or the subject of an elder's plight/frustration. No child is without a mind and voice of his/her own and suppressing that voice is the shittiest thing we do as adults. Often, parents don't realise this and use 'love' and 'concern' as excuses to sabotage the independence that their children are entitled to, since the day they were born. But hey, that's the best part about adulthood right!? We have the power to change the narrative. We can choose to be more compassionate, empathetic, patient and mentally and emotionally available parents when we choose to have kids. We can choose to be better versions of whoever we idolised as kids, or even abhorred as kids. We can be anyone we want to be, do anything we feel like doing, and just exist the way we prefer without ever having to worry about condemnation from another. I have realised this only recently and it hasn't been easy to get rid of the burden I carried in my heart for so long but thanks to two very special ladies I met here at EFLU, I now know that I am not answerable to anyone and don't need to feel guilty about doing anything that brings me pleasure, even if it's my life-givers. Not prescribing a rebellious and uncaring attitude here, just promoting the idea that the scope of thinking about the self is what makes adulthood different from our dependent childhoods and you may choose to disagree!