Actually, I’ve been ignoring a lot of things – I’ve been ignoring myself and everything that surrounds me. Suddenly, it feels like it’s been ages that I forgot the purpose of life, my innocent yet inventive ideas to make the world a better place. I guess I’ve grown up.
I pass by the school gates where I once used to be dropped in. Stalking every little child in uniform carrying bags, heading for school, I wonder what I used to think of college back then. I realize that one of the oddest things about being grown up is looking back at something you thought you knew, and finding out the truth being completely different from what you had always believed.
I picture myself in the playground sitting on the swing with someone behind to help me swing to and fro. It feels like that little girl in my memory swinging to and fro wasn’t really me. The very memory seems so distant, so surreal. It is disheartening to realize that I’ll never be the little girl to whom small things meant a lot, and petty fights with siblings and friends were the saddest thing that could ever happen. I will never be that optimistic bright-eyed kid who believed that every problem came with a solution, and life looked like a fairy tale from every angle.
That was childhood when many would rather ‘dislike’ things and ‘hatred’ was an alien feeling. That was childhood when we easily found motivation and determination to sketch, discover, and explore our dreams. Then was the time when distraction would weep out silently because of our indifference towards it. And then gradually, we grow up. And things change.
Actually, we let ourselves change along with the changing times and changing circumstances. We don’t have an option either. In a split of a second, an event may change the way we think. Our evolving perception towards people and things start drawing new meanings. We come across faces new and familiar. We end up becoming friends with some of them and enjoy the shared moment, and maybe our life changes because of them. Or maybe our presence changes
their lives.
Believe it or not, each passing second changes us differently, and our image today starts to separate from our yesterday’s picture, just like the changing patterns of the shadow of our own body as the day matures. But, just like no one can have our shadow, the memories that we own are uniquely ours and no one can have them either. It’s just that we cannot ever unite with our shadow, or relive our life.
All of a sudden, I realize that I’ve reached my college gates. I have to step out of my car and enter into my present, which will soon become a memory in my life.
Like I’ve been always told, 20 years from now, I’ll surely be disappointed by the things I didn’t do than by the ones I did. So we should thrust ourselves with enthusiasm, laugh till our stomach aches, listen, learn, explore, discover, travel and catch each passing moment and calmly accept the change from within.
Of course, it would’ve been great if eating candies, fighting with siblings, frolicking with best friends, sledding and swinging to and fro would be enough, but it isn’t. A few years from now, the children I stalked a little while ago are going to feel somehow the same; they will be doing almost the same things that I have been doing today, and for sure, they are going to lament their childhood. They too will find out that they have changed.
We can’t go back to any passing second. Unfortunately, time doesn’t travel that way. Therefore, growing while accepting the change and making memories for tomorrow is the only way we can survive and lead a meaningful life. As of now, I guess this is what life is – it keeps changing, and all we can do is make the best out of the moments we have and move on. Happily and with head held high.
The writer is an A-level student at St. Xavier’s College.
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