And it may hurt me, I suppose. It may hurt my individuality I suppose, to realise that I am not unique. And that the life I have just lived, which in reality I have not yet finished living is not just my life, but that myriads of children like me, have had the exact same childhood. Parents arriving in their lives from the same stock of 'culture' and 'value.' Diluted by the 'beliefs' and 'education' of similar grandparents. Peppered by similar 'cunning,' 'benevolent,' or simply 'indifferent' aunts and uncles and smeared with same cousins. Cousins who are exactly what I am, or exactly what I could have been had I been born in their family instead of mine. And my childhood plays out like a film I suppose. Colourful, rich, filled with pathos and irony, all seen through my vulnerable, powerless, 9-year old eyes. My childhood plays on and and on in a loop. I change. For I have grown up and moved away from the film of my childhood. But there is still a multitude of similar children stuck in the film that is my childhood, that is also their childhood. Childhood, wherein, no thought sticks out (or it does, but you have to quash it in order to fit in, and you will want to fit in, for you are still a child) and you live in fear. No No, there is Joy! Joy, happiness, surprise, but there is an underlying patina of fear – Of helplessness – Of rightlessness – of not knowing how to fight back (in a world filled with stupid stupid adults). And as soon as you perceive some strengths, some height, some rights within yourself, you rebel. And the adult world will label you, 'Rebel without a cause.' But of course, there is a cause. An umbrella of causes. For everytime someone was unfair to you. And someone was. Most of the time, it was your benign, loving mother or your silent, reserved but adoring father who wronged you. They wronged you by simply being themselves. They wronged you by the virtue of not being perfect. By being parents without really being God. By just being Good, which simply wasn't good enough, when it came to raising a child. Any child. Every child. Me. Everytime, an adult in power said something stupid, something casually, something lightly, without realising that it is going to stay with me my whole life, for I heard it as a child and my clean slate of a mind, simply absorbed it like a sponge.
And then one day I grew up. I learnt to tell the truth even at the cost of not being liked by my peers, I learnt to tell the truth even at the cost of sounding exactly the same as my peers. I resisted the urge to fit in. I resisted the urge to stand out. And I grew up. And for all my failures in life. I try to chase every thought and analyse everything that enters my ears and my mind and what comes out of my mouth, for I never want to do what my adults did to me. To create false ideals and then not living up to them.
