Growing up...

"Wow, it really snowed last night! Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand new! A new year... a fresh, clean start! It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol'd buddy... ...let's go exploring!"

This was the words of a Calvin & Hobbes strip. This made me think. When we were kids, we always had so many plans, so many possibilities and the idea of something new always got us excited. I guess it's the same with kids all over the world, in all eras. What happens when we grow up? We are so eager to grow up, to do the many things which are forbidden to us as kids, to live without asking permission for everything, to take control of our lives, to live it the way we want. And once we are grown up, we realize, that our lives are not in our control all the time. Most times it is in our control, but at the crucial times, somebody else has the controls. A still worse situation is when you have the control, but either there are so many constraints that you are, in a way, forced to take a decision that you don't like; or you have no clue which decision to take. You are totally clueless as to which option would take you where. Hmm... now I dont want to talk anymore about decision-making. I've done that already.

I'm just wondering what happened to all our hopes and dreams, that we had when were kids. Where did we loose them? I'm consciously using the term "we" and not "you" or "I". Because, I've been talking to many of my friends and all of them said the same thing. Everyone wishes to get back to those old days; college days, school days... basically childhood or even adolescence.

What a stark difference it is! When we were kids, we had so many things to do, and we never had enough time, with all the classes, homework, exams and what not. Then, we would think that we would do all these when we grow up. And now when we are grown up, we don't even remember half the things. And the other half, doesn't interest us anymore. And for the things that we would like to do, we don't have our friends with us.

And if we are not slogging in our offices, if we happen to get out early, we are bored, there is nothing to do. Imagine what we would do, if one day we didn't have much work and got home early unexpectedly, and there is no power and there is something wrong with the internet connection and the phone is extremely low on charge. Well, I don't know what I would do in such a situation. And I'm sure many of you also would be in the same situation. When we were kids we never used to depend too much on phone or computer to spend time. In fact, spending time was never an issue, only lack of time was the issue. What went wrong? When? Where? Whenever I asked this question to anyone, the answer I got was, "Well, we grew up." I never knew growing up was such a bad thing. :(